Phantom (51 page)

“Why?”

“Because I want to confess my sins. And because you look naked without it.”

Cato looked at the man sitting hunched over on the bed. Water was running from his hair, down the scar on his jaw to his chin. From there it dripped onto the floor. He had placed the sole chair in the middle of the room. The confessional chair. On the table lay an unopened pack of Camels and beside it a lighter and a sodden, broken cigarette.

“As you like, Harry.”

He sat unbuttoning his coat and pushed the U-shaped priest’s collar into the slits in his priest’s shirt. The other man flinched when he put his hand in his jacket pocket.

“Cigarettes,” the old man said. “For us. Yours look like they’ve drowned.”

The policeman nodded and the old man took out his hand and held up an opened pack.

“You speak good Norwegian.”

“Tiny bit better than I speak Swedish. But as a Norwegian you can’t hear the accent when I speak Swedish.”

Harry took one of the black cigarettes. Studied it.

“The Russian accent, you mean?”

“Sobranie Black Russian,” the old man said. “The only decent cigarettes to be found in Russia. Produced in Ukraine now. I usually steal them from Andrey. Speaking of Andrey, how is he?”

“Bad,” the policeman said, allowing the old man to light his cigarette for him.

“I’m sorry to hear that. Speaking of bad, you should be dead, Harry. I know you were in the tunnel when I opened the sluices.”

“I was.”

“The sluices opened at the same time and the water towers were full. You should have been washed into the middle.”

“I was.”

“Then I don’t understand. Most suffer from shock and drown in the middle.”

The policeman exhaled the smoke from a corner of his mouth. “Like the Resistance fighters who went after the Gestapo boss?”

“I don’t know if they ever tested his trap in a real retreat.”

“But you did. With the undercover officer.”

“He was just like you, Harry. Men who think they have a calling
are dangerous. Both to themselves and their environment. You should have drowned like him.”

“But as you see, I’m still here.”

“I still don’t understand how that’s possible. Are you claiming that having been battered by the water you still had enough air in your lungs to swim eighty yards in ice-cold water through a narrow tunnel, fully clothed?”

“No.”

“No?” The old man smiled. He seemed genuinely curious.

“No, I had too little air in my lungs. But I had enough for forty yards.”

“And then?”

“Then I was saved.”

“Saved? By whom?”

“By the man you said was good, deep down.” Harry held up the empty whiskey bottle. “Jim Beam.”

“You were saved by whiskey?”

“A bottle of whiskey.”

“An
empty
bottle of whiskey?”

“On the contrary, a full bottle.”

Harry put the cigarette in the corner of his mouth, unscrewed the cap, held the bottle over his head.

“Full of air.”

The old man gave a look of disbelief. “You …?”

“The biggest problem after emptying my lungs of air in the water was to put my mouth to the bottle, tilt it so the neck was pointing upward, and I could inhale. It’s like diving for the first time. Your body protests. Because your body has a limited knowledge of physics and thinks it will suck in water and drown. Did you know that the lungs can take four liters of air? Well, a whole bottle of air and a bit of determination were enough to swim another forty yards.” The policeman put down the bottle, removed his cigarette and looked at it skeptically. “The Germans should have made a slightly longer tunnel.”

Harry watched the old man. Saw the furrowed old face split. Heard him laugh. It sounded like the
chug-chug
of a boat.

“I
knew
you were different, Harry. They told me you would come back to Oslo when you heard about Oleg. So I made inquiries. And I know now the rumors did not exaggerate.”

“Well,” Harry said, keeping an eye on the priest’s folded hands. Sat on the edge of the bed with both feet on the floor, ready, as it were, with so much weight on his toes that he could feel the thin nylon cord
beneath his shoe. “What about you, Rudolf? Do the rumors exaggerate in your case?”

“Which ones?”

“Well, for example, the ones saying you ran a heroin network in Gothenburg and killed a policeman there.”

“Sounds like it’s me who has to confess and not you, eh?”

“Thought it would be good to unburden your sins onto Jesus before you die.”

More
chug-chug
laughter. “Good one, Harry! Good one! Yes, we had to eliminate him. He was our burner, and I had a feeling he was not reliable. And I couldn’t go back to prison. There’s a stale dampness that eats away at your soul, the way mold eats walls. Every day takes another chunk. Your human side is consumed, Harry. It’s something I would wish only on my worst enemy.” He looked at Harry. “An enemy I hate above all else.”

“You know why I came back to Oslo. What was your reason? I thought Sweden was as good a market as Norway.”

“Same as you, Harry.”

“Same?”

Rudolf Asayev took a drag of the black cigarette before answering. “Forget it. The police were on my heels after the murder. And it’s strange how far away you are from Sweden in Norway, despite the proximity.”

“And when you came back you became the mysterious Dubai. The man no one had seen. But who was thought to haunt the town at night. The ghost of Kvadraturen.”

“I had to stay undercover. Not only because of the businesses, but because the name Rudolf Asayev would bring back bad memories for the police.”

“In the seventies and eighties,” Harry said, “heroin addicts died like flies. But perhaps you included them in your prayers, Pastor?”

The old man shrugged. “One doesn’t judge people who make sports cars, BASE-jumping parachutes, handguns or other goods people buy for fun and yet send them to their deaths. I deliver something people want, of quality and at a price that makes me competitive. What customers do with the goods is up to them. You are aware, aren’t you, that there are fully functioning citizens who take opiates?”

“Yes, I was one of them. The difference between you and a sports car manufacturer is that what you do is forbidden by law.”

“One should be careful mixing law and morality, Harry.”

“So you think your god will exonerate you?”

The old man rested his chin on his hand. Harry could sense his exhaustion, but he knew it could be faked, and watched his movements carefully.

“I heard you were a zealous policeman and a moralist, Harry. Oleg spoke about you to Gusto. Did you know that? Oleg loved you like a father would wish a son to love him. Zealous moralists and love-hungry fathers like us have enormous dynamism. Our weakness is that we are predictable. It was just a question of time before you came. We have a connection at Gardermoen who sees the passenger lists. We knew you were on your way even before you sat down on the plane in Hong Kong.”

“Mm. Was that the burner, Truls Berntsen?”

The old man smiled by way of answer.

“And what about Isabelle Skøyen? Did you work with her, too?”

The old man heaved a heavy sigh. “You know I’ll take the answers with me to the grave. I’m happy to die like a dog, but not like an informer.”

“Well,” Harry said, “what happened next?”

“Andrey followed you from the airport to Hotel Leon. I stay at a variety of similar hotels when I’m in circulation as Cato, and Leon is a place I’ve stayed at a lot. So I checked in the day after you.”

“Why?”

“To follow what you were doing. I wanted to see if you were getting close to us.”

“As you did when Beret Man stayed here?”

The old man nodded. “I knew you could be dangerous, Harry. But I liked you. So I tried to give you some friendly warnings.” He sighed. “But you didn’t listen. Of course you didn’t. People like you and me don’t, Harry. That’s why we succeed. And that’s also in the end why we always fail.”

“Mm. What were you afraid I would do? Persuade Oleg to snitch?”

“That, too. Oleg had never seen me, but I couldn’t know what Gusto had told him. Gusto was, sad to say, untrustworthy, especially after he began to take violin himself.” There was something in the old man’s eyes that Harry realized with a jolt was not the result of tiredness. It was pain. Sheer, unadulterated pain.

“So when you thought Oleg would talk to me you tried to have him killed. And when that didn’t work you offered to help me. So that I would lead you to Oleg.”

The old man nodded slowly. “It’s not personal, Harry. Those are the rules in this industry. Snitches are eliminated. But you knew that, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I knew. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to kill you for following your rules.”

“So why haven’t you done it already? Don’t you dare? Afraid you’ll burn in hell, Harry?”

Harry stubbed out his cigarette on the table. “Because I want to know a couple of things first. Why did you kill Gusto? Were you afraid he would inform on you?”

The old man stroked his white hair back around his Dumbo ears. “Gusto had bad blood flowing through his veins, just like me. He was an informer by nature. He would have informed on me earlier—all that was missing was something to gain. But then he became desperate. It was the craving for violin. It’s pure chemistry. The flesh is stronger than the spirit. We all weaken when the craving’s there.”

“Yes,” Harry said. “We all weaken then.”

“I …” The old man coughed. “I had to let him go.”

“Go?”

“Yes. Go. Sink. Disappear. I couldn’t let him take over the businesses, I realized. He was smart enough—he had inherited that from his father. It was spine he lacked. He inherited that deficiency from his mother. I tried to give him responsibility, but he failed the test.” The old man kept stroking his hair back, harder and harder, as if it were steeped in something he was trying to clean. “Didn’t pass the test. Bad blood. So I decided it would have to be someone else. At first I thought of Andrey and Peter. Siberian Cossacks from Omsk.
Cossack
means ‘free man.’ Did you know that? Andrey and Peter were my regiment, my
stanitsa
. They’re loyal to their
ataman
, faithful to the death. But Andrey and Peter were not businessmen, you know.” Harry noticed the old man’s gesticulations, as if immersed in his own brooding thoughts. “I couldn’t leave the shop to them. So I decided it would have to be Sergey. He was young, had his future in front of him, could be molded …”

“You told me you might have had a son yourself once.”

“Sergey may not have had Gusto’s head for figures, but he was disciplined. Ambitious. Willing to do what was required to be an
ataman
. So I gave him the knife. There was only one remaining test. For a Cossack to become an
ataman
in the old days you had to go into the taiga and come back with a living wolf, tied and bound. Sergey was willing, but I had to see that he could also accomplish
chto nuzhno
.”

“Pardon?”

“ ‘The necessary.’ ”

“Was that son Gusto?”

The old man stroked his hair back so hard his eyes narrowed to two slits.

“Gusto was six months old when I was sent to prison. His mother sought solace where she could. At least for a short while. She was in no position to take care of him.”

“Heroin?”

“Social services took Gusto from her and provided foster parents. They were in agreement that I, the prisoner, did not exist. She OD’d the following winter. She should have done it before.”

“You said you came back to Oslo for the same reason as I did. Your son.”

“I’d been told he had moved away from his foster family, had strayed off the straight and narrow. I had been thinking of leaving Sweden anyway, and the competition in Oslo wasn’t up to much. I found out where Gusto hung out. Studied him from a distance at first. He was so good-looking. So damned good-looking. Like his mother, of course. I could just sit looking at him. Looking and looking, and thinking, He’s my son, my own …” The old man’s voice choked.

Harry stared at his feet, at the nylon cord he had been given instead of a new curtain pole, pressed it into the floor with the sole of his shoe.

“And then you took him into your business. And tested him to see if he could take over.”

The old man nodded. Whispered: “But I never said anything. When he died he didn’t know I was his father.”

“Why the sudden haste?”

“Haste?”

“Why did you need to have someone take over so quickly? First Gusto, then Sergey.”

The old man mustered a weary smile. Leaned forward in his chair, into the light from the reading lamp above the bed.

“I’m ill.”

“Mm. Thought it was something like that. Cancer?”

“The doctors gave me a year. Six months ago. The sacred knife Sergey used had been lying under my mattress. Do you feel any pain in your wound? That’s my suffering the knife has transmitted to you, Harry.”

Harry nodded slowly. It fit. And it didn’t fit.

“If you have only months left to live why are you so afraid of being
snitched on that you want to kill your own son? His long life for your short one?”

The old man gave a muffled cough. “
Urkas
and Cossacks are the regiment’s simple men, Harry. We swear allegiance to a code, and we stick to it. Not blindly, but with open eyes. We’re trained to discipline our feelings. That makes us masters of our own lives. Abraham said yes to sacrificing his son because—”

“It was God’s command. I have no idea what kind of code you’re talking about, but does it say it’s all right to let an eighteen-year-old go to prison for your crimes?”

“Harry, Harry, have you not understood? I didn’t kill Gusto.”

Harry stared at the old man. “Didn’t you just say it was your code? To kill your own son if you had to?”

“Yes, I did, but I also said I was born of bad people. I love my son. I could never have taken Gusto’s life. Quite the opposite. I say screw Abraham and his god.” The old man’s laughter morphed into coughing. He laid his hands on his chest, bent over his knees and coughed and coughed.