The Last Pilgrim (45 page)

“You think Krogh did it, right?”

“Yes,” said Bergmann. “But there’s something that doesn’t make sense. It turns out Agnes wasn’t a Nazi. So that means she was liquidated by mistake.”

Waldhorst nodded. Bergmann had decided to wait to tell him the rest. It was unlikely that Waldhorst would confirm Faalund’s claim that Krogh was a double agent.

“It could have been a mistake, as you say,” replied the old man. “And Krogh could still have done the killing. So you’re on the right track.”

Neither of them spoke for a moment.

Waldhorst studied the photograph again. He seemed to be murmuring to himself the names of all the people seated at the table in the picture. His lips were moving, but no sound came out.

“What did you tell Kaj Holt in Lillehammer?”

“What do you think I told him?” said Waldhorst without looking up. It was clear that he was having a hard time remembering the name of one of the guests in the photo. He took off his reading glasses and folded them up. He left the photograph lying on his lap.

“Why don’t you just tell me?” said Bergmann. “It had to be something that got Holt killed in Stockholm the very next day.”

Waldhorst’s hand shook as he filled Bergmann’s coffee cup. Then he filled his own cup, without looking at his guest. For a moment he seemed unaware of Bergmann’s presence at all. He sat motionless, staring at a spot to his left.

“Whatever it was that Holt and I talked about, it’s something I’m going to take to my grave,” Waldhorst said at last. “And believe me, it’s not the worst thing that I’ll be taking with me.”

“You told Holt that Krogh was the one who murdered the two women and the child,” Bergmann insisted.

Waldhorst laughed, not in a derogatory way, but as if Bergmann were a child who had asked an obvious question even though he already knew the answer.

“I won’t lie to you, Mr. Bergmann. A lie, big or small, will always be found out sooner or later. A lie catches up with a person and slowly strangles him—even a man of my age. It was not an insignificant matter that we discussed, Holt and I. But there’s one thing I can assure you. It had nothing to do with those three who were killed in Nordmarka. Absolutely nothing.”

“And you’re not lying about that?” said Bergmann.

Waldhorst’s expression changed, but Bergmann couldn’t tell if he was smiling or giving him a scornful frown.

“I’m not lying, Mr. Bergmann.” He stirred a spoonful of sugar into his coffee. “Holt committed suicide, didn’t he?”

“I think he was murdered,” replied Bergmann. “And the police investigator thought the same thing at the time. He was also murdered . . .”

“Well, believe whatever you like, but I know nothing about that,” said Waldhorst. “On the night that Holt died, I was taken from my cell in Lillehammer. Or it may have been the night before. I don’t really remember anymore . . .” Waldhorst smiled faintly. “A week later I was working in the Office of Strategic Services in Frankfurt. I figure they burned all my papers.”

“And where were you before that?”

“I was transferred to Stockholm,” said Waldhorst. “Then to Frankfurt for a year before I was moved to Langley.”

“Stockholm?”

“Yes.”

“So you were in Stockholm on May 30, 1945?”

Again Waldhorst smiled briefly. His gold teeth glittered in the sunlight.

“Don’t go getting any ideas, Bergmann. Would I tell you I was in Stockholm the night Holt was killed if I was the one who murdered him? And how could I possibly have done it? I was a prisoner. Do you understand? A prisoner with no papers, without a past, maybe without a future as well. I couldn’t even go to the bathroom without guards accompanying me.”

“How do you know he died at night? Or that he was murdered?”

Waldhorst stared at him.

“Newspapers, Bergmann. Newspapers. And didn’t you yourself just say that he was murdered?”

Bergmann didn’t reply. He felt more confused every time Waldhorst opened his mouth.

A long pause ensued. Both of them watched a Lufthansa plane descending almost soundlessly toward Tegel Airport on the other side of the lake.

“Did you know that Kaj Holt had a daughter?” asked Bergmann at last.

Waldhorst nodded. Then he abruptly got up and took a few steps toward the edge of the veranda.

“He told me in Lillehammer,” said Waldhorst, speaking more to himself than to Bergmann. “‘Don’t we all have a little daughter?’” he said. At the railing he stopped, looking suddenly older. His body, close to ninety years old now, leaned over the flowers, his hands moving slowly, like claws about to stiffen for good. Without a word he carefully plucked several withered leaves from the flowers planted in wrought-iron boxes.

“Have you ever met her?”

“Why are you asking me this?”

“I think she’s the one who killed Krogh.”

For a moment Waldhorst stood motionless next to the flower boxes. He seemed to be pondering this statement. Then he continued his gardening efforts, his fingers working their way arduously over the three big boxes, all of which were filled with blue flowers that Bergmann didn’t recognize.

“No,” he said then. “I’ve never met her.”

Bergmann didn’t say a word. Vera Holt could have found out what happened back then some other way. He considered confronting Waldhorst with what Faalund had said—that Krogh had been working for the Germans—but this didn’t seem like the right time. And the old intelligence officer probably wouldn’t have given him an answer anywhere close to the truth.

“Those three . . . Agnes, the child, and the maid,” said Waldhorst. “How were their bodies found?”

“It was just by chance,” said Bergmann.

“Hmm,” said Waldhorst. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned after all these years, it’s that chance is nothing but fate, and fate is nothing but chance.”

The door opened behind Bergmann. He turned partway around and caught sight of the Turkish maid wearing a blue-checked apron. She apologized for interrupting and said something in German to Waldhorst. “A taxi is waiting,” she repeated for Bergmann’s benefit in English.

Waldhorst nodded and waved her away.

“I forgot to mention it yesterday,” he said. “But if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to visit my wife before visiting hours are over. At our age, it’s hard to know how much time we have left together.”

“Your wife is ill?” said Bergmann.

“Yes. But you’re welcome to wait here. I’ll be back in an hour, maybe an hour and a half. Stay to dinner, if you like.” He threw out his hands and gave Bergmann such a big smile that he thought it might almost be genuine.

“Thank you, but no. I have a plane to catch.”

“All right. But we can share a cab. My wife is at the German Red Cross Clinic, which is on the way to Tegel Airport. Or does your plane leave from that awful Schönefeld?”

“Tegel,” said Bergmann, though that was a lie.

“Let’s go, then.”

Bergmann followed the old man through the house, moving through the same white-painted rooms as when he’d arrived.
Nothing but paintings on the walls,
he thought. The only photographs were of children and grandchildren. But something told him these were not the offspring of his present wife.

He stopped in the middle of the massive entryway, whose marble floor was covered with a huge Persian carpet. A tall mirror hung on the wall between the two doors leading into separate living rooms. Bergmann stood there, studying his reflection from a distance of several feet. Behind him he noticed Waldhorst looking at his back from the front doorway. Bergmann turned to look up the grand staircase to the second floor.

“Is something wrong?” asked Waldhorst. In one hand he was holding a rose swathed in cellophane, in the other a small gift-wrapped package.

Yes,
thought Bergmann. But he couldn’t put his finger on what it might be.

“Do you have children?” he asked. “Grandchildren?”

“The children are from my first marriage,” said Waldhorst.

Bergmann nodded and stepped out the front door. The heat was almost unbearable on this side of the house.

“It was too late for us to have children. Gretchen and I,” said Waldhorst pensively as they got in the cab.

Bergmann sank back against the seat, not giving any more thought to what the man sitting next to him had said.

CHAPTER 50

Friday, September 25, 1942

Kirkeveien

Oslo, Norway

Agnes Gerner drew her beige coat even tighter around her and looked to the left, then to the right, and again to the left before crossing Middelthuns Gate and heading for Kirkeveien. She wasn’t sure why she’d bothered, as there was hardly any traffic in the city anymore. But if she was going to die today, it wasn’t going to be from getting struck by some Nazi-owned BMW or ending up under the wheels of a German truck loaded with soldiers.

The same old man opened the door to her on Kirkeveien. Without a word he ushered her through the apartment, shuffling along in his worn-out slippers. In the kitchen he motioned toward the maid’s room, which was now clean and deserted. There was not a trace of Number 1 or the Pilgrim. Only the unmistakable smell of stale cigarette smoke gave any indication that someone had been there. Agnes switched on the ceiling light. The blackout curtains made it almost impossible to see anything otherwise, even on this sunny morning, which was brighter than any she’d seen in a long time. She found what she needed in the wardrobe and quickly changed into the blue suit. Then she took out a little metal box from the brown plastic bag, opened the lid, and stared down at the two nearly invisible contact lenses. Only when she was about to insert the second one—as hard and uncomfortable as the first—did her nerves fail her. Staring into the mirror, she raised her finger to her eye. But her finger refused to go any closer. She started shaking all over. She tried once more, but she was shaking so hard she couldn’t do it. A new wave of nausea rose up in her throat.

For several minutes she sat there, simply staring at herself, with one brown eye and one blue. Finally she heard a shuffling sound out in the kitchen. “Pull yourself together,” she murmured. “You need to pull yourself together!”

The shuffling came to a halt right behind her. Agnes didn’t turn around. The old man took a few steps into the room. He smelled the way men of his age often did, of alcohol and pipe tobacco. Most likely he’d slept upright in an easy chair all night. He placed his hand on her shoulder.

“All of us will thank you,” he said in a low voice, “when this is over.” Then he removed his hand.

Someone flushed a toilet. His wife must be awake. Agnes closed her eyes for a moment and nodded.

The old man turned on his heel and shuffled out of the room. Her hand was no longer shaking and she was able to insert the contact lens in her right eye.
There,
she thought. Two blue eyes. How paradoxical, the Pilgrim had told her, that contact lenses were a German invention, used by the movie industry in America when they switched from black-and-white to color films. Now the Germans were going to get a taste of their own medicine. Five minutes later she had rubbed Vaseline on her hair, smoothed it down, and fastened it with bobby pins. The man came back in to help her put on the blonde wig. He handled it so expertly that she suspected that Helge K. Moen, the hairdresser, had been the one to put him in touch with Number 1.

“Don’t worry, it won’t fall off. Not even in thirty years,” he told her and then went back to the kitchen. He returned with a bottle of hair spray, which he applied to the wig.

Agnes ran her hand over the wavy blonde hair, which fell to her shoulders. There was no doubt it had been made from the finest human hair. She shivered at her reflection in the mirror, unable to recognize the person staring back at her. She put on the horn-rimmed glasses she’d been given and studied herself from the left and then the right.

It’s not me,
she thought as she opened her purse and took out the little box containing the cyanide pill. She held it up to the ceiling light and studied the shimmering blue contents. Didn’t people say that you saw a light as your life ebbed away?

In the bathroom she wrapped the capsule in a stiff piece of toilet paper made from newsprint on which the headlines were still visible. Then she stuck it inside her panties. The stiff paper scratched at her abdomen, and that was all it took to bring on another attack of nausea. She just managed to push the hair of her wig out of the way before she threw up into the toilet.

The old man is right,
she thought, rinsing her mouth.
This wig is never going to fall off.
She scrubbed her fingers with a nailbrush, being careful not to soil her new blue suit. She studied the stranger in the mirror one last time. She smiled, but that only frightened her even more. Her right hand suddenly started hurting, but Agnes assumed it was just a phantom pain, and not from the time she slapped the maid.

The thought of Johanne continued to whirl through her mind. Those eyes of hers and the way they stared at her every day, every hour she was with Gustav. Agnes studied the palm of her hand. She could still feel the stinging sensation. And soon this same hand was going to kill a man.

And yet her hand was calm. Completely calm.
Everything’s in order,
thought Agnes as she washed her hands and then dried them. For a second she felt a sense of peace that she’d never before experienced; it was as though it wasn’t her at all standing in the cramped bathroom on Kirkeveien. In a way, she had already died many years ago, maybe when her father died, maybe even before. There were only two people in the whole world she wanted to think about if she was going to die today: the Pilgrim and Cecilia. No one else. Not even the baby that was making her throw up every morning and every afternoon. There was no future for that child. Only Carl Oscar and Cecilia. But even those two she could do without. Forget them. Erase them. If only she could avoid being tortured, everything would end well.

She silently exchanged her identification papers for those the old man handed her. He studied her for a moment, then nodded. Agnes was about to say, “Take good care of them.” But she didn’t. Maybe it was best this way. She draped the blue coat over her arm and watched as he disappeared into the living room.