The Swimmer (11 page)

Up over the mountains. All we see are more mountains. I dream of mountains and open, snow-covered fields. Ice in pale sunshine. Winters that never end. I drink tea with the local warriors, who call themselves ‘students’, the Taliban. The interpreter tells me that they’ve been studying at the Islamic schools in Pakistan and are deeply religious. Wahhabis, as in Saudi Arabia.

But here they’re rebels, not intellectuals. Their religion is simple and filled with rules. There is no authority beyond Allah. No writing beyond the Koran. And above all: no religion beyond Islam. They tolerate me because I give them the arms and ammunition to destroy the Soviet occupation. The war seems to allow them to compromise. Their faces are masks of hardened leather, their kaftans haven’t changed in a thousand years, and they’re about to defeat the world’s largest army with small arms and a few rocket launchers.

And then? When the Russians have left, when the images of Lenin have been burned and only the ruins and the dead remain? Will these timeless men build a country in the name of Allah? Will we allow them to forbid music, theater, literature, and even ancient monuments? As they say they want to do? Do we prefer that to the ungodliness of communism? Into whose hands are we placing the fate of this world?

It’s a powerful experience, to exact your revenge. Few are that privileged. So many wrongs for which no one is held accountable. There is so much we are forced to accept. And yet I only barely remember it. Just the feverish intensity of the day before. Just the instructions to the technician, an old, half-deaf veteran from some elite unit with lots of experience and a bag of tricks, flown in especially for this. Just his grumbling and fiddling with cables and gray plastic explosives in a bombed-out house in a deserted suburb. How we shook hands, and how, suddenly, I was lying on a roof, in stark sunlight with binoculars pressed so hard against my eye sockets that I had bruises for two weeks afterward.

I remember a face in the binoculars. A face like any other. Eyes like any others. Anonymous features I had memorized from the last page of Susan’s report. I remember the resistance of the button on the remote switch. Remember how smooth it felt in my sweaty hands, in the scorching sun.

Of the explosion, I remember nothing. Nothing at all. All I remember is smoke and sirens, distant screams. Everything was so impersonal, so completely a part of Beirut’s very essence. I remember that I closed my eyes. That I thought, it’s over. I have done what I could do. I remember the emptiness. Stone was placed on stone. Guilt on guilt.

My next memory is clearer. Three sleepless nights later, I hear Annie’s crackling, alien voice coming through the strictly encrypted satellite phone into our little fort of an embassy in Beirut.

‘It’s still too early, we shouldn’t get our hopes up,’ she said.

But her voice was so full of hope that I had to sit down and bury my face in my hands.

‘Are you still there?’ she asked, her voice filtered through stardust, metallic, static.

‘I’m here,’ I said.

‘Can you believe we’re going to be parents?’

In the background I heard the evening open with shell bursts, the sky illuminated by traces of fire and searchlights.

‘The ground is shaking here,’ I said.

‘Here too, honey. Here too.’

And then, if only for a moment, it actually let up. For a second I stopped punishing myself for your death, for my betrayal, for my revenge. Not because I deserved it, but because the unborn child deserved two parents. It was impossible to understand the enormity of a second chance, a second child. Maybe it was possible. Perhaps there was some compromise in me after all. Just Beirut, then I would never leave Washington’s Beltway again. We already had the house, loans, new cars every other year. All we needed was the baby and me.

I came home from Beirut two weeks later, one evening in late August when the smell of freshly cut grass from the local soccer fields filled the air, when the hacking of sprinklers mingled with the hypnotic growl of the highway. I saw Annie sitting alone on the stairs to our bungalow, our suburban dream, as the real estate agent with bleached teeth and tragically provincial Wall Street dreams had called it. I saw Annie’s eyes in the twilight. And I knew. Like I always know.

‘Don’t say anything,’ I said as I held her in that terribly inadequate way that is all I know.

‘The baby,’ Annie said. ‘I tried to reach you.’

‘Shh, don’t talk. I know, I know.’

I held her on the stairs until the darkness was solid and the sprinklers had gone to sleep. Until the highway had diminished to a whisper.

Later, at the kitchen table, with Annie finally asleep in our bed in the room facing the garden, I was back where I started. No sorrow. Nothing except the desire to move away, move out, move on. Nothing except the realization that a lie may be false, but truth is the real enemy.

They wake me up at dawn, and we’re sitting in the Toyota again before I have time to wipe the sleep from my eyes, before my dreams of mountains have been replaced by real mountains. We drive in silence through the orange canyons, through gravel and sand; an early winter without snow. This war is over. Politics is the only thing delaying David’s victory over Goliath. A small victory in the eternal quest for the status quo. My time here is coming to an end, and I’ve asked to be replaced by someone who speaks Farsi or Pashtun. But my wishes are whispers in the wind. No one remembers the languages spoken in Afghanistan once the Red Dragon is on the run. We’ve gotten what we wanted, our goal has been achieved.

Maybe I’ll be rewarded in Washington for my invaluable work in the field. The future scares me as much as the past. A desk job while I wait for everything to start over. Lonely nights in the bungalow with the silent echo of Annie’s footsteps against the thick carpeting. Polite phone calls that end in tears. Explanations that I don’t have. Thoughts of how I lost two families, two children. Thoughts of smoke and sirens. Boredom and then fatigue. The monotonous waiting for my next opportunity to forget, to disappear into a present without context.

Outside the car window, mountains are replaced by mountains, gravel by gravel. We’re moving forward, but we remain in the same place.

Brussels, Belgium

George wrestled his way to the bar at Ralph’s, waving his American Express card. He dove skillfully through a group of red-cheeked, blue-eyed interns, surfacing at the front of the bar next to a loud Irishman, his tie askew, who was trying to get the bartender’s attention with very muddled French verbs.

Ralph’s wasn’t much larger than two normal-size living rooms, but for the last few years, because of its perfect blend of hot interns, younger people from the EU institutions, lobbyists, and lawyers, it was the only bar in the EU Quarter to be at if you wanted to be seen. The perfect place to mix networking, partying, and hitting on young Italians with admiring eyes and low-cut tops under their tailored jackets.

It took no more than a minute before George had two glasses of champagne in his hands, much to the irritated surprise of the Irishman. Paid and done. George shrugged his shoulders at the Irishman and his renewed campaign for the bartender’s attention.

He stretched a little in order to find the tall table he’d just left. Good, she was still there. Mette? That was her name, right? Danish. Intern for the Danish EU commissioner. Perfect. A good contact and super-hot. Sometimes this job was just too amazing. Business and pleasure. He already had her business card, so now there was just pleasure left.

The only annoying thing was that it was impossible to understand what she was saying. Her Danish blended with the background noise at Ralph’s—a mess of at least six other languages with a score by Lady Gaga—was more than he could handle. Danish was hard enough as it was. But switching to English was entirely out of the question. You had to pretend you understood the other Nordic languages. And she seemed to understand his Swedish without any problem.

Well, soon enough, he’d be taking her out of here anyway. Suggest they pick up some sushi and bring it back to his place. Pop a bottle of bubbly. After that, language wouldn’t matter anymore. That was the advantage of living just a few steps from Place du Luxembourg.

He’d made it halfway across the room, when he felt his phone vibrating in his inside pocket. Holding the two champagne glasses in his left hand, he used his right to fish out the phone. Who the hell would call this late on a Thursday? digital solutions was flashing on the screen. Fucking hell. His good mood evaporated like mist out of the room. After his dinner with Appleby it made him nervous to even think about Digital Solutions. The phone stopped flashing before he could reply. For a moment he considered blowing it off. Pretending he hadn’t heard the phone. But then he saw Appleby’s shark eyes in front of him. He shuddered as he placed one of the glasses on the high table in front of Mette.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

He held up the phone and pointed meaningfully toward the door.

‘Duty calls.’

Mette smiled and said something incomprehensible that George interpreted as understanding. He gestured to her that he’d be right back, took his champagne glass, and started forcing his way through the well-dressed wall of meat toward the only door that led out to the square.

It was dark when he got outside, bitterly cold, and for once almost deserted. The only life George could see was the taxi queue outside the sports bar Fat Boy’s on the opposite side of the square and a few frozen souls hurrying between bars in their too thin coats. At the bottom of the square the European Parliament, now closed for the evening, was also completely silent and dark. Nevertheless, its presence seemed almost organic. George thought he could hear it breathing.

Freezing drizzle hung in the air. He unbuttoned his coat, lit a Marlboro Red, and inhaled deeply. Before he had time to call Reiper, the phone started vibrating again. George put the hands-free in his ear while noting the time, 9:55 p.m., in order to bill Digital Solutions for the time the conversation took.

‘Mr Reiper,’ he answered, ‘what can I do for you tonight?’

‘Good evening, Mr Lööw,’ Reiper said. ‘Sorry to bother you. I assume you’re not at the office?’

‘No, that’s correct. I just left. But as I said on Tuesday, at Merchant and Taylor we’re always on duty. What can I do for you?’

George took a sip of champagne as he bent down, trying to peek through the glass door into Ralph’s. In the dim light, he couldn’t see if Mette was still standing where he left her.

‘Good, good. Well, Mr Lööw, I’m sorry to intrude on your evening, but it would be great if we could meet. Now.’

George pressed down on the gas pedal of his Audi, even though he’d have to slam the brakes at the next traffic lights, just down the street. He usually found it soothing to sink into the leather racing seats with Avicii blasting on the stereo. But that wasn’t working right now. Not at all.

He turned off the music. He couldn’t handle the pounding of the bass line. The evening’s champagne buzz was already giving way to a headache. He squeezed two aspirins from a package he kept in the right pocket of his pants and swallowed them without water.

Normally, he loved this stuff, being called in during the evening like a consigliere. Feeling like he was indispensable. Damn, he’d seen it in Mette’s eyes, or whatever her name was, when he’d said that he was leaving to advise a client. Admiration. Excitement.

And if this had been a regular client, it’d be no problem. He’d have called Mette on his way home. Picked up another bottle of Bollinger from a late night kiosk. But with Digital Solutions it was different. There was something about Reiper. Something about that Josh who’d showed up at his office. Something that turned his stomach. And those classified documents on top of it. And Appleby’s dinner tonight. For the first time in a very long time George felt like he might be out of his depth.

Fifteen minutes later, George turned off Avenue Brugman and onto Avenue Molière in the district of Ixelles. He wasn’t out here that often. Sure, he’d eaten brunch at some point at the haute bourgeoisie Caudron or, hungover, had eaten lunch around the corner, at that American diner on Place Brugman, but otherwise he mostly hung out around the European Quarter or downtown.

Nevertheless, it was pretty sweet around here. There were a bunch of embassies along the Avenue Molière, and the street was elegant, with its art nouveau
maisons de maître
and the tall trees lining the sidewalks. He’d read somewhere that properties here were the most expensive in Brussels.

The GPS beeped and informed George that he’d reached number 222, the address Reiper had given him. He parked his Audi in front of the entrance to a magnificent three-story house. Like so many art nouveau houses, it made George uncomfortable. There was something so Gothic about the plantlike facade, with its soft angles and circular windows. All that vaulting ornamentation and thin steel embellishments seemed to be creeping all over the building. The front of the house was dominated by an enormous bay window, which almost reached to the street. The steel-framed windows must have been almost eight feet tall. Heavy curtains were drawn and made it impossible to see inside.

George felt his courage slipping further. The house suited Reiper perfectly. It projected the same feeling of intense uneasiness as its resident. He climbed out of the car, locked it automatically with a reassuring beep, and walked up the four steps to the gate. digital solutions stood on an A4-size brass plate next to the door. It looked brand-new. As if it had been put up yesterday.

George rang the doorbell. He was surprised to hear a modern
riiinnng
, instead of a muffled
ding-dong
. A camera was mounted on the door’s upper right corner. It seemed to be moving. As if someone inside was directing it with a joystick.

‘George. Come in.’

Josh opened the door, wearing what looked like a pair of black combat pants made from some type of advanced Gore-Tex. A sweatshirt with navy printed across the chest. There was something heated about him. Stressed. He was oozing endorphins, and his face was red, as if he’d just come back from a run.