The Swede (4 page)

Government Jet N5071l

Night of April 26, 2008

S
OMETHING ABOUT
S
HAUNA
F
RIEDMAN’S NO-NONSENSE
personality convinced Grip to go along with her. If she wanted to hand him the puzzle piece by piece, fine, he could live with that. Sooner or later he’d find out what she actually wanted him for.

In the Cadillac they drove out of New York to a little airport, where a Gulfstream waited with crew. VIP atmosphere, private hangar, people in nice suits. The cabin of the small jet had two sections, and Grip heard voices in the rear as he boarded. A man greeted Friedman on his way to the back; otherwise Grip saw no one else during the flight. Grip and Shauna Friedman sat down in the saggy leather club seats, the color of sand. Facing each other by the windows, they drank sodas they’d taken from a cooler before takeoff, made polite conversation, and looked out. The weather was clear, and even though they were flying west—chasing a perpetual sunset—eventually the lights of midwestern towns appeared below them. When the last red stripe of twilight melted away, they had been in the air for nearly three hours. Friedman declined the sandwich
offered by a crew member, then moved to the next seat so she could stretch her legs and fell asleep.

Grip nibbled a tuna sandwich made with too much mayonnaise. The cabin lights were switched off. Below him he saw small towns, their scattered clusters of lights, and after a while he could even pick out individual cars as they headed here and there. Lazily, he tried to imagine what people down there were doing, where they were going—was it an early or late evening for them? He had lost track of time. The topography was impossible to read in the darkness; he could see the lights of a bridge but not the water below it.

Engines humming, air-conditioning cooling: with his mind on low, his gaze turned inward.

“All the pineapple you wanted,” Friedman had said, “as much and any time.” Since they couldn’t talk shop during the flight, they had to talk about themselves. Pineapple—it was Friedman who brought up childhood memories. Summers she’d spent with her grandmother on Lanai, the small Hawaiian island that was mostly pineapple plantation. A fruit company owned the land and everyone working there, and it was strictly forbidden to take the fruit, but kids always knew where to steal them. “You get tired of the taste though, really fast.” Grip saw the painting from her office before him, the village of faded wood. By the middle of summer she’d always had enough of the island, and longed to get away. “I guess I haven’t eaten pineapple since.”

On her hand was a single gold ring with colored stones. She mentioned having relatives in San Francisco. Grip tried to put it together, the double-sided identity. Jews were easy enough to recognize—Friedman—and so were the Japanese—the grandma on that pineapple island, her almond eyes. She liked to talk about her parents. Grip was certain that she was an only child and that her parents had waited years before having her. Certainly there was
some family money, but not in excess. She had gone to Williams, a private college in western Massachusetts. Nothing came free—her own words—and her father had been there before her. She joked about the fact that she’d played lacrosse.

Grip looked at her sleeping face. She was careful, her makeup almost invisible. Just a line above each eye. Her eyebrows made two distinct arcs on her bare forehead. She’d put her half-long hair in a clip behind her neck, but a few strands had come loose and fallen across her cheek. For a man who shared her bed, it would have been an irresistible sight.

Grip had noticed that her eyes never wavered. A self-assured look oblivious to whatever else was going on around her. This fit a pattern; she’d used her chopsticks the same way, with a kind of total self-confidence. She was the type who received help as soon as she walked into a store. The type who corrected others, and who never needed anyone to repeat what had just been said. The type who made men feel more insecure the more they fell for her.

That was not, however, Grip’s predicament. While she slept, his gaze did not travel to her breasts or her lips. The beast in him did not stir. Instead, he thought about the puzzle: Newark, Topeka, a flight to California. What bothered him was that Shauna Friedman had told him too much about herself. A bit too much detail. Those descriptions of her grandmother’s kitchen or of some rabbi in Los Angeles were not just friendly—they created a bond between them. It was nicely done. Her chattiness forced him to talk. The FBI had a folder on him, but she wanted more. That was it, right? The question she would eventually ask, she wouldn’t address to a stranger. Yet that folder he had seen, it bothered him. On the flight, he had spoken about trivialities that could not possibly be in there. What had she gained from that?

Grip didn’t mind offering her crumbs about his own past. Unlike Friedman, who’d grown up traveling the entire continent, he hadn’t left the low buildings of his small town until adolescence. No damn pineapples, maybe a few kronor a row from weeding carrots one summer for a stingy farmer. She had seen volcanic lava run into the sea; he had sat in the summer cottage, gazing at the warm glow of the cast-iron stove. When she talked about swimming in the sea, he told her about swimming alone in a pond one August night. Her lacrosse, his soccer. Two seasons in Division I. A knee injury, no big deal, but so ended his dreams.

Then Friedman asked about his family. He had two older sisters, and Friedman amused herself trying to pronounce their names. Both sisters were married, unlike him.

B
y the time they landed, Grip had barely managed to doze off a few times, and it was only as they were taxiing that he actually fell asleep.

He woke to Friedman commanding: “Come on!” She was already standing, her hair brushed and collected behind her neck again. Three-piece suits from the rear cabin passed behind her.

“Where are we?” asked Grip. The cabin light stung his eyes.

“California.”

Lacking the energy to ask for details, he leaned over to tie his shoes.

Outside the plane, a car was waiting. A thin young man in a US Navy uniform drove them through a deserted area of an airport. The buildings were tall boxes painted white. There were few doors, and even fewer windows. The brightly lit buildings stood out in sharp contrast to the black night around them, like a labyrinth in a
computer game. Above an open hangar, where lights washed over some planes, were tall black letters: W
ELCOME TO
NAS N
ORTH
I
SLAND
.

“North Island?” said Grip.

“Yes,” said Friedman. “North Island, Coronado, California—we’re in San Diego.”

Grip humphed in response.

They were driven to a hotel complex, dark and unmarked. In the parking lot, where there were a few cars, a man came out and gave them each a set of keys. Their young driver insisted on dragging their bags up the stairs. He refused to accept a tip when Grip stood like a fool with a few dollar bills fanned in his hand. Friedman hadn’t even tried.

“See you tomorrow,” she said simply and disappeared to her room.

Grip nodded, looked at his watch. He’d set it to New York time, but now he wasn’t sure of the time difference or of how long they’d been in the air. He couldn’t work it out—he’d spent too many hours in the plane’s timelessness. He remained in limbo.

As he entered the room, he was hit by the cold of the air-conditioning. The TV was turned to CNN with no sound: a shouting mob, a news anchor, American soldiers. A corner of the screen showed a clock at half past ten, but nothing to identify the part of the world where that applied. Grip turned off the television, stripped naked, and pulled out the too-tight sheets. He fell asleep immediately.

A
lthough his body didn’t know it, outside the window it was morning. He saw some joggers; the few cars that went by seemed to
drive slowly. From brochures in the hotel room’s leather folder, Grip concluded he was inside the gates of a naval base. Was that important? He wasn’t sure.

“Do you scuba dive?” Friedman had asked during the flight. “What do you like to do in New York? Where in New York do you usually stay?” There was a folder on him that the FBI didn’t want him to see. What the hell was he doing in California?

There had to be an Internet computer down in the lobby. For a moment, he thought about sending an e-mail to the Boss, a sign of life, at least a line saying he’d left New York. But that was not what the Boss wanted. No official e-mail from a naval base in California—at most, a few pencil notes.

After breakfast, which he ate with Friedman under an umbrella at the base’s golf club, she said, “We leave in an hour.”

“Into town, or . . .”

“Make sure you bring your bags.”

“Should I wear a blindfold?”

“Just allow yourself to be patient.” Friedman smiled.

It was the reverse car ride, back to the base airport. Small military jets flew in wide circles, practicing takeoffs and landings; he heard helicopters but didn’t see them. Their car had stopped on the tarmac where a large plane was being loaded. It had military markings.

“Another flight,” said Friedman while Grip watched his bag being carried away.

The sound of her heels echoed on the concrete. A fresh breeze blew in from the sea. Grip was left standing there. An endless trip, just because of some note scribbled on a piece of paper. So far not a single word about Topeka, instead all those little questions about New York. He’d entered the States as a tourist, anonymous because others wanted
it that way. Friedman said that she’d taken care of the hotel bill when he asked, and it was her card that had paid for breakfast. Just like at the Korean restaurant the day before. Nowhere had his presence been noted, not since his passport was stamped in at Newark.

Now a new flight raised the stakes—this time without so much as a destination. Who was busy deceiving whom?

It made him hesitate, at least for a second. But then he thought, the Boss had asked him to do this, after all.

“Just a stone in my shoe,” he said when he caught up with her on the tarmac.

This plane also carried other passengers. When Grip entered the cabin, he noticed that he and Friedman were the only civilians on board. Most wore flight suits with their sleeves rolled up, squadron patches with wings, skulls, and gunslingers on them. They sat together in groups of eight or ten. Loud talk, forced laughter. On the seats behind Grip and Friedman sat a group of military police, all of them armed, but quieter than the aviators.

The engines were started, and the cool air poured in. Among the islands of men with crew cuts, the conversations intensified.

“Did you go home with her?”

“Hell yes.”

Someone applauded.

“And we went out yesterday.”

“Lucky bastard. The whole night?”

A whistle. Someone was being hassled.

“The wife and kids . . .”

“. . . I didn’t call.”

“You never learn, do you?”

Like a ship casting off, in tension and relief, leaving kisses and
rubble behind. Warriors on their way.

The plane rose, and a sandy beach appeared for a second out the window, then only water. They headed straight out without changing course. San Diego, Coronado, due west, nothing but ocean.

The nose was lowered, the engines slowed.

“Garcia,” said Friedman. “Diego Garcia, that is our final destination.”

On the map in Grip’s pocket almanac, it was just a dot with a name. They were headed for an atoll in the Indian Ocean.

Weejay’s, Thailand

Second week of January 2005

I
T WAS INEVITABLE, THE ADDITION
of Reza Khan. The first time they saw him, he was standing by the bar, shouting. Carrying a large backpack and various bulging bags, he had walked all the way from the village. The free glass of juice did not calm him down. He swore that he would walk all the way back just to repaint the sign with the true distance.

He threw all his bags in a pile and then, like everyone else, he stayed.

In the evenings he was the one who spoke to everybody under the palm-leaf roof. Mornings he slept away in his bungalow, called it meditation. He was generous and bought people drinks but himself never drank anything other than Coca-Cola. If someone offered something stronger, Reza raised his hand and said, “Sorry—Muslim.”

“Is he gay?” whispered Vladislav to N. after a few days. Reza’s bleached blond hair stood straight as a brush. He looked like a mad samurai and wore tight shirts. Yet no one doubted him when
he said he was Pakistani, with his dark skin and coal-black eyes. He said he couldn’t remember when he had last been at home in Peshawar.

“So,” asked Vladislav straight out, “the bleached hair, what’s it good for?”

Reza’s laugh was short as a cough. “I was tired of all the attention at airports.”

Vladislav looked puzzled.

“What my kind suffers at border crossings.”

“Your kind?”

“My type, yes,” replied Reza, tapping his finger on the glass. “We Muslims.” He nodded slowly a few times, as if he were speaking to a child.

“Did it work?” asked Vladislav, pointing to his hair.

Reza gazed at him. “Not so far.”

“I’d say it looks fucking awful.”

Just as Reza was about to hit back, a man at the bar muttered, “Idiot,” behind Vladislav’s back.

Reza rose up and half screamed, “Say that again!”

Everyone at Weejay’s froze. The man, who was more than a head taller than Reza, recoiled slightly when the Pakistani jumped up and stood right in front of him. When his smiling lips began to apologize, Reza snapped, “Shut up! This is a matter between me and the Czech there.”

He turned back, took his Coke from the counter, drank, and shook the glass so that the ice sounded like a rattlesnake before saying to Vladislav, “
You
are the idiot, but at least you do not think I will cut your throat. Not like that Yank there, who looks like he watched too much Al-Jazeera.” He pointed at the man at the bar, who carelessly poked in the sand with his cane.

O
ne morning Vladislav walked up with an old shotgun over his shoulder.

“Finish up those eggs,” he said to N., who had just been served breakfast. “I have organized everything. We’re going to have some fun.” N. had no idea what he was talking about. “In the meantime, I’ll get Mary.”

N. ate quickly, and was just swallowing the last of his coffee when Vladislav returned with Mary in tow. She carried a folding deck chair in one hand and a paperback in the other. They brought along Reza as well—Vladislav had pounded on his door until he gave in and got up.

Besides the gun, Vladislav had brought a few boxes of cartridges, a carton of clay pigeons, and an improvised device for throwing them. They divided the things among themselves and set off down the beach. It took them half an hour to get beyond the headland Vladislav had indicated.

As soon as he said, “This is good,” Mary dropped her chair and opened her book. The strip of sand was narrow, and she sat in the shadows of the palms so that they would fan her in the breeze.

Vladislav gave quick instructions to the other two and then loaded the double-barreled gun and fired the first shots. N., taking charge of the thrower, hurled the clay pigeons over the water. It took him a couple of tries to master the technique. Vladislav reloaded, and when N. managed to get the pigeons to make a wide arc through the air, they all came down in a shower of black chips. Four hits in a row, and then Vladislav handed over his gun to Reza. A throw, a shot, a single splash in the water—it went like that a few times before Reza began taking Vladislav’s advice seriously. At the first hit, he raised his arms and cheered. Mary looked up from her book. A couple of hits, and then it was N.’s turn. The hits came fast; he had listened to the advice.
Reza wasn’t interested in throwing pigeons, but instead stood and fiddled impatiently with a few cartridges while he waited. Vladislav did the throwing and gave commentary.

N. felt satisfied, hitting at least every other, and he let Reza and Vladislav take turns with the rest of the ammunition.

Reza couldn’t get enough. He crouched with his gun as if wanting to pounce with every shot.

“Did you ever get more than two in a row?” He grinned at N. when he did it. Vladislav was silent when he shot, just nodding sometimes when he got a hit. Reza imitated his way of reloading the gun with a violent jerk, so that the empty cases flew. N. hurled clay pigeons until his arm hurt—throw, shot, throw, shot.

A flock of pelicans came flying along the beach. Reza and N. watched them, while Vladislav reloaded. They glided over the beach at the edge of the palm forest. Mary put the book in her lap and stretched her back.

“Coming right at you,” she said unexpectedly.

Reza looked at her, puzzled.

“Well, why not?” she continued. The pelicans glided, without moving their wings at all.

Vladislav caught on immediately and fired two shots. He dropped the first two birds, then reloaded quickly. He passed his gun over to Reza. “Here!”

Reza licked his lips hesitantly. The birds flapped but stayed in a line, and then he fired. His first shot hit nothing, and the pelicans veered off in different directions. After the second shot was fired, a bird in the middle of the line winced and tumbled down in a spiral through the air. It landed in the sand a few meters behind Mary. She watched as it awkwardly flapped one wing, making it turn in a circle. Its large beak looked for something to peck.

“You must finish it off,” said Vladislav. He took the gun back from Reza, who stood frozen, and reloaded it.

“Here!”

Reza took the gun again, walked a few steps toward the bird, hesitated. The pelican gave a hoarse cry. Mary remained sitting in her lounge chair, stroking her knee.

Reza’s shot landed short, throwing a cloud of sand over the bird. Without the slightest flinch, Vladislav grabbed the gun by the barrel and walked straight up to the pelican. He stood and watched it for a while as it turned in circles at his feet. He crouched down, looked at the bird, stood up, took a step back—shot.

I
t was Saturday night. Everybody was treating everybody else to beers and oversize cocktails under the palm-leaf roof. People talked back and forth among the tables, laughing loudly, and some couldn’t resist going out in the darkness for a swim in the sea. Pranks lasted as long into the night as anyone could keep a bar tab. N. made sure he was drunk into oblivion by the time people started talking about the Wave. It was always that way; something would start at one of the tables and spread like a disease. Half-truths and myths took hold. It was unstoppable. N. responded to direct questions with lies: he was traveling alone, had seen nothing. That way, nobody asked about his scars or bandages.

But then the conversation turned to the religious sect and their leaflets. The rejoicing over all the deaths, how the victims had only themselves to blame. Many under the palm-leaf roof had heard talk on the beaches about fights and demonstrations in nearby cities. Just as on evenings before, the mood turned ugly when the subject
came up. Voices were raised. Someone spat in anger and threw his glass, which smashed against the side of the bar.

The man who’d called Reza an idiot the other night stood nearby, tossing out comments about Baptist mobs and evangelical wackos, which further fueled the debate. N. hated being reminded but listened to every word. He watched the tall man with the cane and wondered who he was. A young woman said she’d seen on television a group of people chanting, holding signs about sinners and God’s punishment. They were Americans, she said, a Christian sect. This had happened in the States, and apparently was still going on. The news had spread from television to the Internet, and out into the world. And it was here in Thailand that the response had been the most intense. Angry crowds had tried to attack a couple of consulates and the office of some airline, but riot police had protected them.

“Americans,” said a local bartender, collecting bottles, “the authorities here . . . they don’t dare do anything else.”

“I saw police beating people up,” said the woman, her voice cracking, “just to protect America’s interests, even for a bunch of sick religious fanatics.”

The bartender made a gesture that suggested he was ashamed.

A few hours and several glasses later, when spirits were running high again and Vladislav was just about to tell the next table how he escaped from the bus, Mary leaned close to N. and said, “Come.”

“What . . .” He looked around, confused.

“Come on.” She stood up, and he followed her out into the sand.

They headed for Mary’s bungalow, her skirt fluttering around her bare legs. His mouth felt dry, and when they stopped outside her door, he thought she was the more sober one. She held his wrist, and he tried to put his other arm around her shoulder.

“No,” she said firmly. He stopped, some kind of misunderstanding. She lifted his arm again, turning it with interest under the light from a lantern on the path.

“We’re going inside.” She opened the door.

N. stood awkwardly in the middle of the small room while Mary lit a candle and looked around for something. As she bent over in front of him, her skirt slipped down and her tank top rose up her back. In the gap appeared a tattooed cat—a black cat arching its back, its tail straight up. N. hadn’t seen it before; his first impulse was to touch it. Its eyes stared straight at him.

“Sit down,” said Mary, standing up with a small bag in her hand. “On the chair there.” She pulled up a stool and sat down beside it. The candle burned on the table beside them.

“Let’s see now.” She had unwrapped the bandages on one arm and felt with her fingertips over the stitches. N. closed his eyes, feeling only her hands and his own breath. His sleeve was in the way, and she made him take off his shirt. She felt him, up and over the shoulder. Again on the other arm.

When N. looked up, she had taken a scalpel from the bag.

“They’ve got to come out now.”

N. didn’t answer. She held the knife in her hand in a way that suggested habit, heating the blade by the candle flame without getting it sooty. He let her. It didn’t hurt, only pinched a bit, as the stitches were eased out of the skin around the scars.

N. stretched out his arms and looked at them: irregular stripes that looked like something sewn by Dr. Frankenstein.

“Lift it up,” said Mary, and clapped her hand once in her lap. N. raised one leg so that she could reach. He was wearing only a pair of thin shorts. With the bandages rolled off, once again she examined him with keen little movements. Felt around the edges of his
kneecap, massaged a tendon in his knee, then touched a sore on the inside of his leg that extended down the calf.

Her fingertips subtle, he got an erection. His hips responded but, overcome by shame, he pulled back his leg and sat up. He avoided looking at her.

“Lift up your leg,” she said, rolling the scalpel between her fingers. “Leg.” When he didn’t respond, she bent forward and lifted it into her lap again.

The small threads from the stitches looked like black pine needles when she laid them on the table.

One last tug as a thread was cut, and N. let the other foot slide down on the floor.

“Did I get them all?” she asked.

He looked down at his legs. They had been the worst. He looked at all the twisting scars that branched like white roots. He was about to say something when Mary leaned forward so that her lips just touched his shoulder. Felt her warmth, her hair falling over his arm. Her fingers found their way in between his fingers. A white stripe revealed where there had once been a ring. He didn’t remember if he had lost it or taken it off.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, “not anymore,” and stood up. Once again, the tattooed cat’s eyes in the gap on her back when she turned around.

“Not anymore,” repeated N. He stood up too. Mary moved slowly in front of him, as if she were dancing. Slowly, lightly. She touched her own shoulder with her cheek and came closer. Like a wave.

“Did you have children?” she whispered.

N. floated inside, as if he had drunk a truth serum. She felt it.

He turned to her without looking. Her closeness there anyway, sensed as warmth, a scent. What he saw was his children’s faces. As
clearly as if they were standing right in front of him. Saw the color of their eyes. The blue.

He held up two fingers, but Mary had already put her index finger over her lips.

“Ssh . . .” Then she whispered, “No past . . . no future, just like me.” She smiled.

He tried to smile as well.

“You can live that way,” she said, with a slow shrug. “Can’t you?” She stood with her back to him, hesitating. N.’s breath moved through her hair. He exhaled again, making the loose hairs tremble. Then he stretched out his hands, gently, as if reaching out in a completely dark room, felt the skin beneath his fingers. Brought them to her hips, saw her shoulder blades relax. Slowly, as when a tree starts to fall, she leaned back against his chest.

“No,” she said quietly, but not wanting him to stop. Took hold of his hands and led them over her stomach, guiding his movements with intertwined fingers. The inviting indent of her navel. Then it was his power that carried them forward, still with her hands over his. The hip bones’ relentless inward trail, fingertips balancing as if on a tightrope. Her gasp like that of a frightened audience. His own lustful sound when he brought his hands together over her mound. Thin fabric, a hint of hair. He pressed himself hard against her.

“Does it feel awful?” she asked and turned around, taking hold of his hand and gently licking the palm. “Is it terrible?” That same vigilant, fearless gaze as when the pelicans were shot.