Weight of the Heart (Bruna Husky Book 2) (28 page)

40

I
t wasn’t true what the Central Archive said about the cursed zone. There weren’t any geysers or sulfur emissions, although the terrain was partially flooded because of the rising sea level, despite the dykes built decades earlier. The farther they went from Pori, the more distance they put between themselves and the battlefront, the thunder of the artillery, and the ruins of houses. You could say that the plan to erase from memory the surroundings of Onkalo was working; the closer they got to their destination, the emptier and more desolate the landscape. Initially, they followed the old road, although they often had to make a detour when they found a section submerged. But there came a point where the asphalt disappeared completely—just as they entered the blank part of the map, terra incognita. The countryside was sad and inhospitable, a constant, monotonous, waterlogged forest of sparse blackened trees, round piles of granite covered with brownish lichen, and pools of turbid water. The rocks were gray, the trees black and scorched, the sky a dirty white. The only color was the faint, sickly brown of the lichen.

And the silence. An unreal silence. No birds. No wind. Only the sounds of their footsteps and the occasional creak of an old tree, a creak that sounded like a lament. Deuil led the way, followed by Bruna, then Clara. But Bruna looked behind her regularly; she had the feeling they were being followed. Perhaps a foolish sensation but worrying. She touched her Beretta with relief. It was in the right-hand pocket of her pants. She was also carrying her backup charge of plasma, her precious subcutaneous morphine hits, and a vial of bioglue in a small bag around her neck. An emergency kit for battle. Sometimes morphine allowed you to go on fighting despite the pain, saving your life.

More cracks behind her, another shiver. Bruna looked around again. The same panorama of dark tree trunks and frightened branches.
It’s Death,
she thought.
Death pursuing me, like in my story. Three years, nine months, and fourteen days.

“What’s the matter, Bruna?” asked Clara, coming up beside her.

“I have the feeling we’re being followed.”

“I’m jumpy, too, but I think it has more to do with what’s ahead than what’s behind us. I don’t know. I have a bad feeling.”

They fell silent and walked on together for a stretch. They’d been walking through this grim landscape for hours. A tedious, infuriating journey.

“What was that story the little Russian girl asked you to tell her? The one you said you’d finish when you got back.”

Bruna smiled. It often happened that the two of them seemed to have the same thoughts in their heads at the same time.

“It’s a story I made up. You may not believe it, but I made up a story. I was just thinking about it. I was thinking that Death is pursuing us, just like in my story.”

“Tell me the story. Go on.”

“It’s long.”

“Who cares?”

“I’ll give you a summary. Imagine a happy world with no memory and therefore no time.”

“Why? Why is there no time if there’s no memory?”

“Because if you don’t remember the past, only the present exists,” Bruna said. “If you’re going to interrupt me, I’m not going to tell the story.”

“Okay, okay.”

“Fine. It’s a happy world in which Death doesn’t exist either. Wolves eat fruit, and tigers sleep with fawns. And in this place there lived a race of double-beings, consisting of giants and dwarfs. Each giant carried a dwarf on his shoulders, and they loved each other dearly. These beings were mute—they didn’t speak at all—because they loved each other and they understood each other perfectly. They understood each other so completely that they didn’t need to exchange words. But then one day one of the dwarfs became obsessed with the fact that he loved his giant so much that it pained him he couldn’t remember all the tender moments they spent together.”

“Because they forget everything?”

“Right. So in order to preserve those moments he started to draw the scenes they’d experienced on the giant’s skin. He drew well, and the trick worked, because he really did remember. But as he remembered he began to feel distressed, because he started to compare the happy moments they had experienced, and it seemed to him that they’d loved each other more in the past. It seemed that his giant didn’t love him in the same way now. So the dwarf became so obsessed by this that one day he couldn’t cope anymore and he grabbed the colossus by the hair.”

“What’s a colossus?”

“The giant, dammit. He grabbed the giant by the hair and shouted, ‘I want you to tell me you love me.’ And then the Earth trembled, the sky tore open, the tiger ate the fawn, and the birds were struck down in full flight. Because with these words paradise ended, and time, memory, and Death came into the world.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s how the story goes. Then the double-beings collapsed, and the giants went one way and the dwarfs another, and they all hated our two friends because they had caused Evil to invade the world. But our giant and our dwarf still loved each other. They fled together, because Death was chasing them, jealous that they still loved each other. They spent three years as fugitives. Until one day Death finally caught up with them and kissed the giant on the lips. The giant was struck down, drowning in his own blood.”

“No!”

“Yes.”

“And then?”

“That’s where I left it. I haven’t invented the ending yet.”

“That’s the story you’ve told the girl? It’s awful.”

“That little girl is tougher than me.”

“Yes. I know. I saw it. That’s precisely why you need a happy ending.”

Bruna looked at Clara in surprise. They were so similar and yet so different. Clara was quite literal and incapable of understanding metaphors. At the same time there was an acute lucidity with which she dissected the most complex situations, the deep and certain simplicity of her thinking.

Clara’s clarity. Bruna’s obscurity.

“What are we going to do when we get to Onkalo?” Clara asked.

“Go inside. Take pictures,” said Bruna. “Gather proof to take back to Madrid. We have to find out who the mole is. Who paid the Black Widow.”

“Let’s try not to wake the beast. It could be like in your story. Inserting Death into paradise.”

Well, well! Clara has used a metaphor,
thought Bruna.
She just needs a bit of training.

“Look, the Gulf of Bothnia,” Deuil cried out.

The sea was visible among the trees. They walked to the shore and studied the mercurial water. If you looked carefully, you could see the gelatinous mass of jellyfish pulsating below the silver-gray surface. Gigantic concentrations of jellyfish thickening the oceans and depleting them of other forms of marine life.

“The island of Olkiluoto is farther to the south,” said Deuil, checking the map that Yiannis had extracted from the Munch picture. All three of them had loaded the map onto their mobiles.

They passed various islands, bigger and smaller, lots of inlets, a few semidemolished dykes. The rising sea level had impacted the zone severely. After almost an hour they reached a stone hut built on the seashore with a wretched flat-bottomed keeled rowboat tied up next to it. As they approached, a dog ran out, barking. It was a black-and-white monster, barely two hands high and with three heads, two the same size and a smaller third one. A man came out right behind the mutant canine. He was old, shabby, bent over, and there was a hump on his right shoulder blade, maybe the result of TP disorder. The two groups studied each other, the dog no longer barking but snuffling through his three snouts. It was 18:00, and it wouldn’t be long before the light began to fade. It was unreal to meet someone like this in such an isolated and bleak setting.

“This has to be the little boat drawn on the map,” said Bruna, approaching the man. “We want to go to the island of Olkiluoto. Is it that one?”

The hunchback nodded and held out a hand, palm up.

“How much does it cost to cross?” asked the rep.

The old man raised three fingers on the other hand.

“Thirty gaias?”

He shook his head.

“Three hundred?”

He nodded.

The rep paid him, and the hunchback untied the boat and he and the dog got in, followed by Deuil, Bruna, and Clara. The old man rowed with unexpected energy, while the dog rested its front paws on the side, panting with its three little tongues out, happily wagging its tail.

“What do we do to get back?” asked Bruna when they reached the other side.

The man hunted in his pocket and gave the rep a narrow tube. It was a small signal flare. He pointed at his hut, clearly visible on the opposite shore, and then pointed to his eye with one finger.

“We fire the flare, and you see it and come and get us,” interpreted the rep.

The hunchback nodded and started to row back to his hut. Bruna watched him moving away, a look of hesitation on her face. In the worst case they could always swim. It wasn’t that far. The biggest problem would be the stinging jellyfish.

They headed inland through the same landscape of granite, black tree trunks, and lichen. They were heading for the spot designated by the coordinates deciphered by Yiannis: 61.23513°N, 21.4821°E. The place looked like it had been untouched since the beginning of creation; it seemed inconceivable that they had been excavating and building such a colossal site for almost a century. There had undoubtedly been roads and packed-earth bridges, probably dorms for the workers. Not a trace remained. The camouflage was perfect.

“It’s here,” said Deuil.

“Here? Where?” asked Clara, surprised.

There was nothing more than trees and rocks and shadows, which were starting to form pools.

“Let’s search carefully. We have to be near it. Mai Burún did say that it was barely visible,” said Bruna.

They began to walk around, scrutinizing the ground.

“I think I’ve found it,” Deuil exclaimed, his voice tight with emotion.

The reps ran to where he was. A few granite rocks hid a descending staircase with four or five steps that led to a metal door embedded in the rock and of the same gray color. It had to be the entrance. Bruna let out her breath. It made her shiver to think that they were right above eight hundred tons of radioactive waste.

“Right. Let’s go in,” said Bruna.

She took out the decoder and placed it on the door. The device activated itself as soon as contact was made. Long strings of numbers and symbols flashed rapidly across the small screen, while the four blank buttons lit up red and started to blink. They waited for the machine to come up with the code. A minute passed. Two minutes. After three minutes the device switched off. The door remained shut.

“Something’s not working,” said Bruna, examining the device front and back.

She placed it back on the metal door, and it activated itself again, going through the same routine as before. This time Bruna randomly hit one of the buttons. There was a discordant error sound, and it continued to flash red. She pushed the other buttons and the same thing happened.

“I think we’re missing an access code. A code you’re supposed to enter with these buttons.”

Just then a call came in on Bruna’s mobile. It was Lizard, and it had a high-alert symbol beside it. It wasn’t the best moment to talk to him, but the high-alert symbol was not one to ignore.

“What’s up?”

The inspector’s face was sepia colored, and unformed clouds of pixels danced over it like flocks of birds. The quality of the signal was very poor.

“I have to speak to you right now. In private. Right now, Bruna.”

“Let me have a go in the meantime,” said Deuil, holding out his hand.

Bruna handed the decoder to the tactile, went up the steps, and walked some twenty meters away from the rocks.

“Talk.”

“Daniel Deuil’s body has turned up.”

“What do you mean?”

“The tactile’s.”

“It’s Daniel’s father! Is he dead?”

“Bruna, the tactile Daniel Deuil had no children.”

“That’s not true. You’re mistaken.”

“He had no children! In fact that’s why it’s taken so long to discover the body. Divorced, no children, not many friends. They found the body because of the smell. He’d been dead three and a half weeks, Bruna. The forensic doctor thinks he was killed between July 22 and 23. Wasn’t that when you started with him?”

Her heart stopped for an instant between two beats because she knew Lizard was right. July 23 was the date of her first appointment. She heard a noise in the distance like a metallic thud and looked toward the entrance to Onkalo, but the trees prevented her from seeing it. She took her Beretta out of her pocket.

“Where was the body?”

“In his consulting room.”

That’s why we never had any more sessions there,
thought Bruna as a cold sweat broke out on her temples. When she first met Deuil, the real Deuil must have been dead already. Maybe behind that door in the hall.

“Bruna, I don’t know who that man you’re with is, but be very careful.”

Bruna felt her spine tingle. She sensed a presence behind her. She cut off and turned around, gripping her weapon. She wasn’t surprised when she saw the supposed tactile, or when she discovered he was pointing a plasma gun at her—a gun she didn’t even know he had.