The Princess Trap (28 page)

Y
lva had stayed
in her pink room practically all the day before. Her mother kept calling and banging on the door, but she hadn’t responded.

In the evening, her father had come home. She’d let him in. His men were now all over the country, and Ylva could see that he was worried about what might happen next.

“Believe me, it’s all coming to a head,” he’d said. “The rebels with spies inside the government! Who’d have suspected Liron? And they’ve got arms caches everywhere!”

Ylva had said nothing.

“These northerners want it all,” her father had continued. “And the king and the government do nothing. Sabotage everywhere, shortages, people starving …”

“Are you sure the rebels are really behind it?” Ylva had asked with just a hint of sarcasm. “Are you sure it’s not your wife again, banging her wooden spoon?”

“What?”

Then Ylva had gone to bed. Let him ask her mother what she meant.

She had been lying on her pink princess bedcovers since she woke up, not knowing what to do. The television was on, with the sound turned down, but all it was showing was Scandian forests followed by Scandian folk singers, interspersed with the familiar photo of Jenna, Perry, and the newspaper. Why should she bother going back to school? And what should she do at home? Nothing was what it seemed to be. She thought about her mother in that phony housewife’s apron, and then zapped the remote control until she got an international news channel. The Far East. The Middle East. Famine in Africa. Floods in Southeast Asia. Earthquakes in the Caribbean. So much suffering, yet here she was, an almost-princess.

“Ylva!” her father called through the door. She knew right away that something had happened. “Ylva, I’ve got to go!”

She jumped up and unlocked her door. Her father gave her a hug.

“It’s started,” he said. “The rebels are marching on Holmburg.”

“What?” asked Ylva.

“I’ve just received a phone call,” said her father. “Battle orders. I wanted to say good-bye before I leave. Be careful, Ylva. This is civil war, and you know what that means.”

To her surprise, Ylva saw that he was sweating. Was he afraid? Or excited?

“We’re going into Holmburg,” he said. “We have to take Parliament House and the palace. These are momentous times, princess. Look after yourself and your mother.”

Ylva stared at him. She thought of her mother with that headscarf. And of the blatant heading on the plan for the coup. Nothing was what it seemed to be. “Are you sure this is right?” she asked. “Daddy, the business with Liron …”

“Good-bye, Ylva,” said her father. “I just didn’t want to go without saying good-bye.” He turned, waved his hand, and closed the door.

Ylva fell back on the bed and stared at the television screen. Was there really going to be war now? Civil war, people killed — how many killed? Who would govern afterward? Far East, Middle East, starvation in Africa, floods in Southeast Asia, earthquakes in the Caribbean … She turned up the volume. From now on, she’d stay tuned to the international news channels. She couldn’t stand the suffocating coziness of the Scandian stations.

“… the shortages in Scandia,” said the anchorman. “Our foreign correspondent has been shown a video taken on a cell phone …” (dim pictures of barely recognizable trucks in the distance) “… which would seem to suggest that the cause of the shortages in Scandia is by no means what the citizens have been led to believe. The situation in the country now appears in a totally different light.”

Had she understood correctly? Ylva turned the volume up even louder, as if that would change anything. Now the correspondent himself appeared on the screen, pointing excitedly to the scene behind him of large hangars, men running, trucks and satellite vans with the logos of international broadcasting companies. “… still trying to contact our Scandian colleagues,” he was saying. “But despite our efforts, not a single Scandian TV station has a representative here! And yet it would seem that this has been going on for weeks …”

Ylva jumped up. So it wasn’t the rebels! She
knew
it!

“Although the citizens of Scandia have been led to believe that members of the new coalition government were conspiring with the rebels, and deliberately causing the widespread shortages of food and other supplies,” said the correspondent, “it seems clear now that what lay behind all this was a plan to turn the people of Scandia against their new government, and in due course even to …”

Her father! She had to tell him!

“When our French colleagues arrived, they filmed a large number of trucks loaded with weapons that were being taken to the hangars, evidently in order to give the impression that this was a rebel arsenal,” said the correspondent. Ylva could hear his excited voice behind her now as she leaned out the window. “Only last year, Scandia experienced …”

Had her dad gone already? Or might he still be saying goodbye to her mother? Maybe she could still catch him. The car was standing by the steps, its engine idling, with the driver at the steering wheel.

“… our cameras,” said the correspondent. “In fact, our German colleagues have already …”

Her father emerged from the front door and stood at the top of the steps. He was wearing his uniform, and now began slowly to go down toward the car.

“Dad!” shouted Ylva.

“… incredible!” said the correspondent. “The French cameraman has …”

“Daddy!”

He heard her. Thank goodness, he heard her! He turned and, as he opened the car door, he looked up. The engine was running.

“Dad, come back! It’s all a lie! It’s a lie, Dad! I’ve just seen on television —”

As he got in, he waved, and then he closed the door. Even before it was shut, the car leaped forward and was on its way.

“Daddy!” cried Ylva.

It was too late.

She stood at the window. The car was racing down the driveway. And it was all one huge lie.

“The Scandian security forces have confiscated their cameras,” said the anchorman in the studio. In the background was a photo showing uniformed, armed men attacking the foreign television crews. “A CNN cameraman has been clubbed on the head and is badly injured. We can only say that the situation in this island country is becoming more and more confused. It does seem certain, however, that the attacks and incidents of the last few days have been the work of very different forces from those first reported by …”

Ylva grabbed the telephone and dialed her father’s cell number with flying fingers.

The other end was dead. She should have expected that — under the circumstances, he would have switched off his personal phone.

The television had returned to the Far East, the Middle East … Ylva zapped back three channels. On Scandia 1, four contestants were trying to guess the name of Zeus’s wife: a) Vera; b) Hera; c) Pallas Athene; d) Maria. On Scandia 2, a duo in embroidered Scandian costumes was singing a folk song and gazing enraptured into each other’s eyes while behind them the sunlight sparkled on a Scandian lake.

“I don’t believe it!” screeched Ylva.

She toggled back and forth between the two channels. On Scandia 1, the next question was: “Who composed
Eine kleine Nachtmusik
?” On Scandia 2, the duo had been replaced by a middle-aged tenor with a spray tan, trying to look twenty, while the lake had been replaced by waves beating against the shore.

“But they
must
know what’s going on!” cried Ylva.

Had she been dreaming? The international news channel was showing the floods in Southeast Asia. “And now back to the extraordinary reports coming in from the island state of Scandia,” said the anchorman. She recognized the images, scanned back to Scandia 1 and 2 — still the quiz, still the singers — then back to the foreign news again, the nervous correspondent, soldiers rushing toward him, then a blur, and the anchorman in the studio.

“… by the Scandian security forces,” he said, and Ylva clicked back again. The game show had given way to a cooking program, and the singers and their Scandian landscapes had been replaced by three women on a sofa in front of a studio audience: a talk show.

“I don’t believe it!” she yelled again. One last time, she went back to the international news channel.

“After today’s events, however, it does seem certain that …”

Why wasn’t Scandia 1 showing what was happening here? They should have been the first to broadcast it! And why did the security forces seize the foreign reporters’ cameras?

Did her father know? Was it possible that he was one of the people behind the whole plot? Or was he just as stupid as her mother, banging her pot with her wooden spoon?

“I don’t think he knows,” murmured Ylva. “Daddy would never …”

She jumped up. Everyone in the country could see this if they wanted to. But who would think of switching to a foreign newscast? Scandians watched Scandia 1 and Scandia 2, and Scandia 1 was showing a cooking program, Scandia 2 a talk show. So who else in Scandia would know what was going on?

She had to do something. She couldn’t let her father march on parliament and the palace just because he thought the country was under threat from the rebels, when in fact …

She dialed a second time, although she knew she wouldn’t get through. There was only one thing she could do now. She had to look up the number of the local taxi company. The only one she knew by heart was the one by Morgard.

All her life she had thought of herself as Princess Ylva. She wasn’t going to stop now.

H
e would have to
give up smoking. Eventually, when all this was over. There must have been at least twenty stubs in the ashtray. He was always telling Norlin to lay off the booze, but he couldn’t keep away from the pack in his pocket. Not that smoking was as bad as drinking, but it still annoyed him that he couldn’t get it under control.

“Blast it all, what a disaster!” he yelled into the phone. “Which channel? We should have thought of that when the kids got away! We should never have let ourselves rely on the loyalty of our own media!” He looked for the remote control and began switching channels. “Just as I thought! I always knew it would be our downfall if we let all these foreigners into the country without rigid controls! A free press …”

At the abandoned factory, the security forces were confiscating a journalist’s camera. Down came the billy club.

“And now we all know how the rest of the world is going to react, thank you very much! What did they have to do that for?” He was breathing heavily. “Just as long as it’s over before the citizens learn about it …”

But Bolström knew that, in the long run, that was impossible. Every Scandian household had a television, and almost everyone could now receive international channels. The only question was who was actually watching, and how quickly the news would spread. Maybe over the Internet. But as long as the Scandian press kept quiet, nothing was likely to happen yet.

Abroad, of course, they would think the worst, but what did he care? If by tomorrow morning the government he’d set up was sitting in parliament, it wouldn’t matter two hoots that the foreigners now knew what had been going on in Scandia.

Someone was saying something on the telephone, but he didn’t listen. He knew that there were enough people abroad — enough governments, to be frank — who’d be secretly toasting his success. And as soon as he’d saved the country, he’d make sure the borders were closed and the phone networks controlled as quickly as possible. Cutting off access to satellite television and the Internet might be more tricky. The people probably wouldn’t like that. No, it wouldn’t be easy, but after only one year away he should be able to regain a grip.

“And of course we still need to get those two kids!” he hissed into the receiver.

The last match. He hated lighters. He needed that hissing sound, the tiny explosion when the sulfur scraped against the side of the box. “What do you mean, everyone can see there aren’t any rebels on the march? Who can see that? How? Let them all think the rebels are marching somewhere else! You’ve got the soldiers: Use them, and fast!”

He threw the empty matchbox onto the table. “I need to be kept informed at all times.”

The door opened. Two bodyguards stepped into the room.

“What?” said Bolström. They hadn’t knocked, so it must be something important.

The men looked at each other, and then one spoke. “Norlin’s gone,” he said. He looked scared, as if he was afraid he might be blamed. “He’s not in his bedroom.”

“We can’t find him anywhere,” said the other man. “We’ve searched all over.”

“What?” yelled Bolström. Not this on top of everything else. “Then search some more! You know what will happen if he talks? I hope I don’t have to put out a bounty for him as well, do I?”

The men shook their heads and beat a hasty retreat. Bolström inhaled again, then picked up the phone. Why was it all going so wrong? If he didn’t do everything himself … The whole country was full of idiots.

Malena sat on a boulder at the edge of the school grounds and looked down into the valley. It was full of heather and white clover, and she thought she could smell the scent of raspberries up here under the burning midday sun. It was from here that she’d run away last year, ducking behind one bush after another until she was finally out of sight of the school and no one had been able to find her. How far away it all seemed, and how unhappy she’d been.

And now? Was everything all right now?

She listened to the voices behind her on the field, the shouts and the laughter.
At school I’m cut off from everything
, she thought.
Perry and Jenna disappeared two days ago, and I have no idea what’s happened to them.

Her school banned the use of any kind of phone during the week so that the students would form a community of their own, without constantly communicating with parents, relatives, and friends back home.
Forget community!
thought Malena. As if a cell phone would make any difference.

And there was no television, either, during the week, because without it, they wouldn’t sit there passively, wasting their time. They’d talk to one another, and play games, and compete in every sport that Scandians participated in, and join the orchestra, the choir, the theater troupe, the film club …

But I’m sure they would have told me if Jenna and Perry had been found
, thought Malena.
Everyone knows how worried I am. After all, Jenna’s my cousin — they all know that. They’d tell me. If I’ve heard nothing, that must mean nothing’s happened.

She started throwing pebbles down into the valley. At first they clicked against the rocks, but then they disappeared silently into the bushes farther down the slope. “Malena?” said a high-pitched, slightly out-of-breath voice behind her. It was a little girl with messy braids. Her tails of her school blouse had slipped out of her skirt waistband. “I was told to come and get you, Malena. Telephone.”

Malena felt a tightening in her chest. What did the call mean? Something good or something bad?

“Is it my father?” she asked, jumping down from the rock.

The little girl shook her head and shrugged her shoulders at the same time. “Don’t know,” she said timidly.

As she hurried past the girl, Malena recalled how she had felt at that age. Little girls had to be polite to big girls, run errands, hold doors open. One day little girls would themselves become big girls, and other little girls would do the same for them. Malena remembered how strange it had seemed at first: She was a princess, so how could anyone tell her what to do just because they were five years older?

But then she’d grown to love the custom. She had admired the big girls and envied them, and she’d longed for the time when she would be one of them. But that had long since ceased to be something special.

She hurried along the cool corridor of the school building, and knocked on the door of the headmistress’s study. Soon she would know.

The headmistress looked up and smiled at her. “Malena!” she said, pointing toward the telephone. “It’s Ylva von Thunberg. She sounds very upset. I thought I’d better make an exception and let you speak to her.”

Malena was taken aback.

“Hello, Ylva?” she said.

“I think you should go home at once,” said Ylva. “I think something’s about to happen.”