To the Top of the Mountain

14

FIRST IT WAS French. A long, complicated conversation in French. There was a lot of smiling, a lot of laughter into the phone. The man standing motionless by the closed door, gazing across the large study, thought to himself that even his gestures had become French. He, who spoke two languages at most, had learned to distinguish between languages by the changes in his boss’s body language. Long before he heard that a new conversation had begun, his boss’s gestures had revealed it to him. The movements had taken on a different tempo now, they were slower but more distinct; slightly abrupt, perhaps. It was obviously a conversation in German. After a few sparing, solemn phrases, the speech took a new turn, which he could see because his chest puffed out, his back straightened and his jaw tightened. Since he realised that it was Spanish now being spoken, the man allowed his gaze to drift across the large study. The conversations in Spanish always took time.

Everyone in their line of business knew about this room. It was here that the big decisions were made, where the large transactions took place. The panoramic window out onto the bay; the large, digital globe on a pedestal next to the L-shaped oak desk; the walls covered in Miró paintings above the high dado rail; the thick Persian rugs on the shiny, mosaic-like parquet floor.

Everything was well known, legendary.

The man by the door knew that he shouldn’t have been in this mythical room, that he wouldn’t have even been allowed in if the circumstances hadn’t been so extreme. The lack of staff was getting acute.

They had known one another for thirty years, came from the same little village in the mountains; they were childhood friends. Still, he had never won the great man’s trust, other than as a friend, as a link to the past. Nonetheless, he accepted his role as a reserve without hesitation, his role as a substitute, as a surrogate. Even that was an honour.

He called him ‘the great man’. It was natural. But he never said it aloud. Doing so sounded pathetic, corny. But in his mind, his boss was never called anything other than ‘the great man’. There, it was anything but pathetic.

When the language changed once more, he decided that it was precisely this multilingualism which he admired most of all in his boss – it was there that he was ‘the great man’. This multilingualism was a requirement for his sprawling international business.

On the other hand, there were parts of the business that he just couldn’t come to terms with. The fact that the great man knew all too well how he felt about these areas was probably the main reason why he had never been part of the inner circle. Before now, when there was no other choice.

When it was also those parts of the business which had caused the problem.

The language now being spoken was fairly familiar. The gestures had become cockily natural. As though it was his mother tongue.

It was Swedish.

He realised that it was the ‘security consultants’ on the line.

‘Yes,’ the great man said from behind the desk, spinning round in the leather chair to look out of the window. ‘I understand. And you have no idea where he is? No. OK. That makes the situation unstable to say the least. Yes, the material may well be on the way and then we’ll have a real disaster on our hands. So in spite of everything, we’ve got to trust his greed. It’s the most reliable thing we’ve got. We’ve got to trust that he’s waiting until we’ve calmed things down. And that means we’ve got to find the briefcase fast. Number-one priority. Yeah, yeah, full throttle. Speak soon.’

The leather chair span 180 degrees. For the first time, his eyes were on the doorway. When the next exchange began, it was finally directed at the man by the door. And the language was that which had, at one point in time, had the courage to call itself Serbo-Croat.

‘Ljubomir,’ said the great man, waving him over. ‘No trace?’

Ljubomir strode across the large study, meeting the other man’s piercing gaze and shaking his head.

‘And the money’s really stuck?’ the great man continued.

‘Yes. It was probably a mistake letting Jovan open the bank account. Now that he’s dead, we don’t have either the key or the identification papers. The money’s stuck. Unless we rob the bank.’

The great man frowned slightly; that didn’t bode well.

‘We may be childhood friends, Ljubomir,’ he said softly, ‘but remember that you should never, and I mean never, say what was or wasn’t a mistake. That’s way beyond your authority. You should just arrange everything I ask. That’s your only job.’

Ljubomir looked down at the desk.

‘Have you got it?’ the great man asked.

Ljubomir nodded and placed a backpack on the desk. He opened the zip and pulled out a two-way radio. The great man contemplated it, and said: ‘Frequency?’

‘It’s programmed. It’s ready to go. Just press the button next to the microphone.’

That gaze again. And then, ice cool: ‘I know how a two-way radio works.’

The great man sat quietly for a moment, the radio raised. In the few seconds which followed, Ljubomir imagined that he saw the great man’s true essence; it swept across his face like an icy north wind, tightening his features. The man about to speak was someone different. A ruler. A master. The most terrifying adversary you could imagine.

He pressed the button and changed languages once more. With clear, almost pedagogic emphasis, the great man began, in Swedish.

‘This is a message for the person who stole my briefcase. You know that I will find you, and you know what will happen then. To know roughly what will happen requires no more than a minimum amount of imagination. But not even the most well-developed imagination is enough to know exactly. So give the briefcase back now. If you think about it, it’s in everyone’s interests.’

Then he switched language once more, and repeated the tirade in English. Word for word.

Ljubomir shuddered.

He hoped it wasn’t obvious.

They were in bed again. He was pale, she was dark, and they were finally sleeping.

After the longest night of their short lives, they had fallen asleep in an embrace, still joined, as one. The morning sun was shining through the lowered blinds, and although it was almost thirty degrees in the tiny flat, neither of them had rolled away from the other. They refused to separate.

But soon it would be necessary.

It wasn’t what they had planned.

After they had practically danced over the threshold into the room, he had unpacked the champagne, torn off the foil, loosened the wire around the cork and prepared himself. She had gone into the bathroom and carefully cleaned the briefcase. Not a speck of blood could be left behind when they opened it. She came back out and they kissed briefly before she placed the briefcase on the table beside the champagne glasses. He was ready, holding the cork firmly in his right hand.

She lifted the lid of the briefcase.

No bundles of money.

Not a penny.

Only a key and a two-way radio, each in an individual holder.

The champagne cork popped by itself. It smashed the mirror in the hallway. Seven years’ bad luck. As though to finish the job, he threw the bottle after it. The neighbours banged on the ceiling.

He cried.

But she thought.

She was already thinking. It had always been her only defence mechanism.

She lifted the key from its little holder, turning it over and over. There was a number engraved on it. 401.

‘Safe-deposit box,’ she said. ‘Box 401.’

‘A safe-deposit box, for fuck’s sake,’ he whined. ‘Where the hell is it, though? Kiruna? Paris? Guatemala?’

‘Can you make a copy of it?’ she asked, reaching for paper and a pen and jumping onto the bed.

His desperation was knocked off course. He could see the purposefulness in her, the thing which had led them there, and it put a stop to his self-destructive streak. Reorientated it. Towards something constructive. Like it had done so many times before.

‘You know I can,’ he said honestly.

‘Can you do it now?’ she asked, starting to write a list on the piece of paper.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I can.’

‘Get going then,’ she said.

He took the key and went over to the walk-in cupboard where he had set up his workshop. Before he opened the door, he said: ‘What’re you doing?’

‘I’m trying to remember all the places he does business. It’s our only chance.’

He nodded and went into his compact little workshop. She stayed on the bed, writing. They worked like that through the night, each of them busy with their own task. Finally, the key was ready and the list was written. Then they could finally be united. And how they united. It was as though their bodies were meeting for the first time. All they had experienced on the longest night of their short lives took the form of desire. Of love. Love and desire were one and the same.

They fell asleep in an embrace. The list ran through her mind as she slept. All these places where escapism was in easy reach. This endless need for relief, for ecstasy, for expanding the senses. As though the senses we’re born with weren’t enough. As though their boundlessness wasn’t boundless enough. But the demand for a change of circumstances was also endless, and that meant that access was endless, and the circle was complete. The vicious circle. And the person who represented access, the one who made sure that the circle stayed vicious, that was him. The centre. The viper. And she’s a child again. It’s a recurring dream. She knows it in advance, she knows every part of it, every little variation, but she can’t stop it. It’s as though the dream has to have its turn. As though, for some reason, it has to have its turn. That little awakening in the midst of sleep. An old, innocent dream being interrupted, never to return. One that she can’t remember any more. That she won’t ever be able to remember again. To begin with, it’s just a flutter between the sheets. But then it’s eyes, a gaze that belongs to someone else, or rather to no one, no one human. And her legs are forced apart and she doesn’t know what is happening, doesn’t understand, can’t understand, hasn’t got any chance of understanding what is being forced into her, can only understand the most basic of things, and that is that her trust has been broken, that trust itself has betrayed her, that the person she should be able to trust most in the world has treated her the worst in the world. And that was only the beginning.

It’s only the beginning that she remembers. It’s only the beginning that has become a dream. The rest went like clockwork. Became habit. Became the norm. A norm which meant that she was the first to split away from the girls and to piss on the boy on the floor.

All because of him. The viper.

And it’s then, in the middle of the dream, that the voice appears. That voice. She got it into her head that suddenly there was speech in the dream, a dream which had always been so horribly silent, but the voice forced its way through the dream, from another place, a dark, dark place, and it was crazy, completely crazy, because when she opened her eyes and managed to orientate herself in the room, she heard that the voice was coming from the briefcase.

She thought she had cleaned all traces of blood from the briefcase.

The voice said: ‘This is a message for the person who stole my briefcase. You know that I will find you, and you know what will happen then. To know roughly what will happen requires no more than a minimum amount of imagination. But not even the most well-developed imagination is enough to know exactly. So give the briefcase back now. If you think about it, it’s in everyone’s interests.’

It was only when the message was repeated in English that she managed to stand up and stumble over to the table.

She knew exactly. But when she lifted the briefcase above her head to throw it towards the already-broken mirror, she started to think. Her only defence mechanism sprang to life.

He watched her from the bed. Eyes wide open, sheet instinctively drawn up to his chin. A futile defence. A little boy’s instinctive defence.

‘Was that him?’ he asked after a moment. ‘The viper?’

She stood, the briefcase raised above her head. Reflection was fighting against instinct. And won. Eventually, thought won over feeling.

‘Yeah,’ she said, putting the briefcase down on the table. ‘I think we need to hurry.’

He sat on the edge of the bed and started to get dressed.

‘Why didn’t you smash it?’ he asked. ‘Surely we only need the keys?’

‘We can’t throw away anything that could be a way out,’ she said. ‘We can use that to get in direct contact with him. If we need to.’

He nodded, trying to understand. She went back to the edge of the bed and began to get dressed. She picked up the list from the bedside table and tore it in half. She held one half of the paper out to him. He took it from her, and looked at it.

‘Do you remember how we’ll stay in touch?’ she asked.

He nodded.

‘No direct contact,’ he said, pulling her close to him. They were united one final time in the middle of the bed. A long, terrible kiss goodbye. A last moment of direct contact.

All that they meant to one another rushed through them.

All of it hurt.

‘Remember why we’re doing this,’ he whispered. ‘For the dolphins’ song.’

She smiled, hugging him closer.

‘And for the steam rising between the falling raindrops,’ she said, feeling the tears well up.

They stood in the hallway. It was time. They didn’t want to, it didn’t feel right. Still, they had no choice.

‘Four hundred and one,’ she said, self-controlled. ‘If there’s no box number 401, it’s the wrong bank. Then you don’t even need to try.’

‘Are you taking the briefcase?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘Pandora’s box,’ she said, smiling wryly.

And so they went out, alone, into the world. As alone as they had sworn they would never be again.

There weren’t as many of them as there should have been. It happens, he thought, glancing around the dingy basement. It’s not the end of the world, he thought. You had to expect stuff like this. Losses, he thought, pulling off his gold-coloured hat and looking at it. Pawns, he thought. The biggest wins always involved victims. Apparent losses.

Though was Jocke really an apparent loss?

Esse was one thing – but Jocke?

He pulled on the hat and was crowned in gold once more.

He knew that the midsummer sun was already shining on the other side of the door. But in here, a cool, damp darkness prevailed. No windows, not even a little hole. Just a naked light bulb above a carpenter’s bench where the only activity was taking place. In an armchair in the corner, a large man with cropped hair was cleaning a sub-machine gun. Rogge’s always cleaning a gun, the golden one thought. If there were any more firefights, he knew he could count on Rogge. Always ready. And on the sofa next to him, Danne. Who he could normally also always rely on. Danne Blood Pudding. His prison name. Dark as a blood pudding. Purple face. How long would they be able to haul him around? The bullet must have gone right through him without hitting any bones or vital organs, but he was still bleeding. Left shoulder out of action. Maybe he would be able to use a weapon again. Not a safe bet.

And then Bullet by the carpenter’s bench. The technical genius. Small and compact. Experienced with weapons and cool under pressure. My man, he thought, going over to him and placing a hand on his shoulder.

Bullet was hunched over a two-way radio. It was switched on. An oscilloscope lay next to it. Waves of differing shapes danced across the screen. He soldered a circuit card onto the side, turned a knob and the waveform changed shape.

‘So we’re not completely fucked?’ he said to Bullet.

Bullet said nothing, just continued twisting the knob, eventually finding a waveform that he seemed to be happy with.

‘Like hell we are,’ he said eventually. ‘It’ll be fine. Assuming one thing.’

‘Explain it all now.’

‘OK. Shouldn’t Rogge listen too?’

‘He doesn’t get anything anyway.’

‘Listen carefully then,’ said Bullet, leaning back in his chair. ‘The set-up was probably like this: they each had a briefcase, each a radio. They didn’t trust each other enough to just hand the money over. It’s in a safe-deposit box somewhere; we saw the key in the briefcase, didn’t we?

‘So the idea was probably that they’d contact each other on the frequency written on that piece of paper we got hold of and then, when everything had calmed down, the other person’d tell them which bank the money was in. The radio we saw in the briefcase was a special kind of police radio, I’ve seen one before. Since we know the frequency, we can find the radio. It’s a frequency that’s not in general use because they don’t want to be overheard. This kind of radio always sends out a faint directional signal, so if we use this little monitoring device, we can track the signal down – and the briefcase, too. Though the signal’s so weak that we can only find it if it’s no further than ten, twenty kilometres away. I just have to calibrate it, then we can get going.’

‘And what’s the thing we’re assuming?’

Bullet looked up at him.

‘That they haven’t chucked the radio,’ he said quietly.

The golden one could feel himself grimacing.

‘And why the hell would they keep it? Surely it’s just the key they’re interested in?’

‘I think,’ said Bullet emphatically, ‘they got just as much of a surprise as we did, whoever they are. I think they’re gonna have to search for the safe-deposit box. And I think they’ll keep hold of the radio so that they’re not chucking away any chances. Though,’ he added, ‘that’s just what I think.’

‘It’s good enough for me,’ said the golden one. ‘It’s normally enough.’

Just then, the waves began to dance on the oscilloscope. Bullet gave a start and shouted: ‘What the fuck, I’m getting something!’

The police radio on the carpenter’s bench burst into life.

‘This is a message for the person who stole my briefcase. You know that I will find you, and you know what will happen then. To know roughly what will happen requires no more than a minimum amount of imagination. But not even the most well-developed imagination is enough to know exactly. So give the briefcase back now. If you think about it, it’s in everyone’s interests.’

Then it was repeated in English.

The golden one started to laugh. He laughed loudly for some time. Then he said: ‘That smooth-tongued bastard. I’m going to blow the fucking tongue out of him. That’s a promise.’

Bullet looked sceptically at him.

The man sat motionless. Everything had gone to hell. He was trying to make sense of his life. He couldn’t, there was no way out. It was meant to happen smoothly, discreetly and silently. Instead, a bomb had gone off. An utterly real, clumsy, extremely visible and noisy bomb. Five dead. He couldn’t believe it was true.

All he wanted was to get away to a place where the winters were shorter.

Well, that wasn’t strictly true. He also wanted to put away a man no one had managed to put away. Capture the thing that had never let itself be captured.

He looked around the room. An anonymous room. Completely anonymous, in fact. He thought about the word: anonymous. I’m anonymous, he thought. All ties to the past were gone. What he was doing now had nothing to do with the past, it was pure future.

And it had gone to hell.

The kitchen table was cheerless and white. Plastic. That would have been impossible before. Now anything was possible. A terrible freedom. Even this was possible.

The man stood up to fetch a cup of coffee. The machine bubbled chaotically, like it did every time its job was done. First chaos, then the great calm.

The calm was death.

He poured the coffee, looking down into the pitch-black brew, as though into the kingdom of the dead, and heard a crackling from the kitchen table. He rushed over so fast that the coffee splashed out of the mug, throwing open the briefcase with such force that papers flew out of the brown folder. Among the piles of paper lay a sophisticated two-way radio; the kind that scans a large number of frequencies simultaneously. It said: ‘This is a message for the person who stole my briefcase. You know that I will find you, and you know what will happen then. To know roughly what will happen requires no more than a minimum amount of imagination. But not even the most well-developed imagination is enough to know exactly. So give the briefcase back now. If you think about it, it’s in everyone’s interests.’

The civilised brutality of the voice. The almost-polished, refined cruelty.

Two things struck him. They went together, sort of.

First, that they were hunting the money. That meant that they themselves couldn’t get at it. But they would presumably get it back, and in a way that would probably involve more deaths. And then perhaps everything would be possible again. So this was also a message for me, he thought. It said: ‘I know you’re listening. Hold on, don’t do anything hasty, wait, the money’s coming. Whatever you do: don’t do anything hasty.’

What the hell had he started? A terrible snowball had been set in motion and he wouldn’t have a hope of being able to stop it. It would roll in over Stockholm, taking down everything in its path.

Everything.

It was him and him alone who had set it in motion.

Second, he thought: danger. Before, he had completely ignored the personal risk. But when things had grown chaotic, when his colleagues had got involved, when everything had started to fall apart, that was when it had all destabilised, even for him. Maybe they would come after him now.

His insurance wasn’t really valid any longer.

He was afraid of the pain, that was all.

When he finally lifted the coffee mug to his mouth, there was nothing left in it. The jet-black brew had spilled out over the floor and table.

It wasn’t time to drain the bitter draught yet.

There were things left to do.