Chasing the Storm (26 page)

Suddenly there was shouting and a confused trample of heavy footsteps. Rygg looked up. Three figures burst in at the door and a powerful beam shone into their faces. But Sokolov and the goons slowed when they saw Rygg and Lena sitting before the altar. They strode up, guns aimed at their heads.

Lena started screaming at them. “Shoot me!” she shrieked. “Shoot me!” She grabbed at the gun of one of the goons, pulling the muzzle onto her forehead, but he yanked it away.

Sokolov walked up to the altar and began to laugh. Lena hushed, and she and Rygg just watched aghast as he stood leaning on the marble, looking into Marin’s shattered face and laughing. At last he turned to them, his guffaws diminishing to a chuckle. “So Sasha had some issues with his master, it seems,” he said. “Well done, Sasha, I must say. Well done.”

And suddenly Rygg saw it all. “So it was Sasha?” he said. “
Helvette!
You motherfuckers. That’s why—” He was so angry, with himself, with Sokolov, with Marin for letting himself be duped, that the words stuck in his throat. He recalled his words to Marin when he’d first met Sasha, about never thinking your hacker was the best or fully trusting them. Marin had trusted him so much that he … he’d just assumed that everything was on the up and up with him.

“Yes. We have been ahead of you all the way, Rygg. That’s why you couldn’t shake us. We were a part of you from the beginning.”

Rygg shook his head. “So where’s Sasha?” he asked.

“Well, I’m sure he has no interest in staying around here,” Sokolov chuckled again. “But we too have fallback scenarios. Anyway, you two are free to go.”

“Go?” Rygg stared at him stupidly. “Go where?”

“Anywhere you want.” Sokolov waved a hand at the entrance, which was a rectangle of white light. “Anywhere in the whole wide world you want, Torgrim Rygg. We’ll be staying here to deal with this mess.” And he barked a Russian command at the blond goons.

So Rygg took Lena’s hand and helped her up. Half-carrying her, one arm around her waist, the other holding her elbow, he walked with her out the door and into the bright morning. It seemed far too calm and pretty for the scene of horror they’d just witnessed. The hills tumbled down to the sea, which was a wash of pale blue-gray in the distance. Below them, the little town of Platres was a smattering of orange tiles and colorful flowerbeds, with half a dozen streets winding through it. “Come,” he told her. “Come, it’s not that far. We can make it.” And they set off down the track in the new morning.

In the town, they found a café that was open and sat beneath a grape arbor. Lena’s face was dead white and her mouth was just a slot. Her eyes were dull, unable to focus. Rygg ordered two coffees and a glass of whiskey. He drank his whiskey in a gulp and ordered a second, but Lena just sat staring out at the tumbling hills. “Your coffee,” he said to her at one point. She slowly turned to him, then looked down at the cup. She touched it with a finger, as though unsure what it was, then let her hand fall into her lap. She looked back out at the hills.

Rygg went in to use the toilet. As he was walking back out to the veranda, he spotted a dusty computer in a corner. Pointing to it, he said, “Internet?” to the mustached waiter. The waiter shrugged and went into the kitchen. Rygg reached around the back of the computer and turned it on. After it booted up, he tried connecting. It took a while, but it finally connected at 45 kilobytes per second. After a couple minutes, he managed to bring up the BBC.

There were two articles about the
Alpensturm
, and several images of the boat in the Larnaca harbor and the disembarking commandos. He read the articles, starting with the oldest, which quoted the Russian government’s brief. According to the government, seven hijackers, all of them Siberian criminals, had been arrested on board the ship. The criminals had been flown, under heavy guard, to Moscow, where they would be questioned and tried. The crewmembers, who were tired and dehydrated, but not in any danger, were recovering at an undisclosed location. The second article consisted of ill-informed and vacuous musings on what the ship might have contained and what secrets the Russians were concealing.

He went back to the home page and was about to log off when he saw that a third article had popped up in the last minute. It was labeled “BREAKING: Russian Journalist Claims Iran Connection.” Rygg skimmed the article, then scrolled back to the top and read through it more slowly: “Noted Russian undercover journalist Marko Marin earlier this morning released a lengthy article presenting evidence that the
Alpensturm
contained nuclear-capable S-400 missiles bound for Iran,” the article began. It went on to detail the allegations. Everything was there: Yuri’s images, Sokolov’s attempt to cover up Ann Devonshire’s discovery, the pictures Rygg had taken in the Ministry of Defense, Youssef’s information about the Mossad agents, and finally, the pictures of the Iranian agents Rygg had taken the evening before in the Larnaca airport. Reading through it, Rygg was struck by how airtight it was, how carefully Marin had covered every angle. Sure, the images could have been faked, he could have made up half the stories, but what motivation did he have? The story read true.

Rygg sat back and nodded slowly. “Good for you, Marko,” he said aloud. “Good for you. You did it.”

He went out and took Lena’s arm and gently led her to the computer. He sat her down and scrolled up to the top of the article. As she read, the tears washed down her cheeks as if they’d never stop.

Chapter 25

Home

That very evening,
they were on a flight for Athens, then Oslo. Rygg couldn’t even remember taking off from the Athens airport. One moment they were taxiing on the runway and the next the flight attendant was shaking him, saying that they were about to land in Oslo. He’d slept the whole way.

There were a couple hours of craziness at the airport, but Rygg showed the officials Marin’s articles, which by now were all over the web. And finally, after making half a dozen calls, their agent stood and shook both their hands. “You’re a hero!” he said. “Sorry about all the hassles. We’ll get Miss Lor—, Miss Lorin— your friend here a visa as quickly as we can, don’t worry. And then it looks as though you might need a hospital for that.” He nodded at Rygg’s hand. The bandage was filthy, and his hand was red and swollen.

They were taken in a black Volvo to a ward at a military camp a few kilometers from the airport. Rygg had been there once before, to visit an FSK companion who’d been wounded on a mission. Rygg spent a couple nights in a spacious room, and Lena, who wouldn’t even sleep in an adjacent room, was given a bed beside his. They slept for twelve hours the first night, woke for a few dazed hours while nurses fussed over them, then slept again. When Rygg had finally gotten all the sleep out of his system, one of the nurses asked if there was anything he needed.

“Anything at all?” he said.

She nodded. “We pride ourselves on our care,” she told him. “Especially for heroes like you.”

“All right. I’ll tell you what I need,” he grinned. “
Anna Karenina
.” He didn’t feel like a hero at all.

“I’m sorry?”

“
Anna Karenina
. The novel, you know. Tolstoy?”

Her smile faltered slightly, but she nodded. “
Selvsagt
. I will see what I can do.”

And within an hour, he was propped up on the pillows, reading his fourth copy of
Anna Karenina
and drinking coffee, while Lena slept beside him.

They had a few sessions with officials from Etterretningstjenesten – the Norwegian Intelligence Service – and an American who said he was “just a friend of Norway.” They were very interested in the Russian Ministry of Defense and had him go over the layout a number of times. They were also curious to learn more about Faisal, but Rygg fudged over that info a bit. But most of the conversation focused on Sokolov. And there, Rygg told them as much as he could.

May 17

Three days after their arrival, another official car took them to his apartment in Drammen. Silently they sped across the Drammen Bridge, down the E134 and through the narrower roads of Austadveien, which seemed as foreign now as Hamburg and Moscow and Cairo. And finally they turned into the dingy jungle of high-rise buildings. The car halted beside his building. “Well,” he said. “This is it. My building.”

And it was only when he entered his sad little apartment, with a used coffee mug still on the table and a shirt crumpled on the rug and that musty smell he could never get rid of, did he realize that the adventure was over. He spread his hand toward the lumpy brown sofa and tried to summon a grin. “Have a seat, Lena,” he said. “I don’t have tea, but I can make you some coffee.”

She looked at him with the lingering despair in her eyes that he feared would never leave. “Of course, Torgrim,” she said. “Yes please.”

So he made coffee, rinsed out a couple mugs, and straightened up a bit. And then they sat side by side on the sofa, like an old married couple, not saying anything, taking sips of coffee from time to time, staring at the wall where his television had stood before it was stolen.

That night she came into his bed. He’d made up the bed in the guest room and had finally gotten to sleep, when he woke with warm limbs against his. At first he thought they’d just lie together – she was crying and pressed her face into his chest. So he stroked her hair and ran his fingernails across her back, saying her name over and over. But after a while she raised her face to his and kissed him. Her lips were soft and questing. They made love slowly in the darkness and she was weeping the entire time, even as she clutched him and pressed him deeper into her. Afterward, she fell asleep at once, but he lay looking up at the ceiling for a long time, listening to the distant sirens. This was what he’d dreamed of, but he hadn’t been prepared for the rush of emotion, the tenderness he felt for her. Even in the early days with his wife, he hadn’t felt anything like this. “I’ll make a new life for you, Lena,” he whispered. “We’ll make a new life somewhere.” But even as he said the words, he felt them evaporate and a nameless fear entered his chest.

May 18

In the morning, he kissed her sleeping cheek gently and went out to the kitchen. He made coffee, but the fridge was empty. He popped out to the small grocery store at the end of the block and picked up some eggs, milk, bread, butter, and marmalade. On his travels, he’d missed the flavorful Lerum marmalade, with its shavings of orange peel. “Where you been?” the old Vietnamese lady at the counter asked him. “We not see you for long time.”

“I was on a trip,” he told her. “Business trip. Hamburg. And other places.”

She peered at him. “You look different,” she said. “You lost bit of weight maybe? You been on diet?”

He shrugged and nodded. He paid for the groceries and walked back to the apartment. As he entered, he noticed, shoved halfway under the carpet behind the door, a white envelope. He must have missed it when they came in the previous evening. He picked it up and tore the end off. Inside were two pieces of paper. One was an itinerary, for Mr. Torgrim Rygg and Ms. Lena Lorincozová: Oslo Gardermoen – Paris Charles de Gaulle – Nairobi – Bujumbura. One way. He glanced at the date. Tomorrow evening. No. It was already tomorrow.
This
evening. And then, shaking so that he could hardly hold the paper, he read the second message, in black ballpoint: “I need your help.” He recognized that cramped scrawl.

For a long minute he stood there, his mind whirling. “No way,” he said. “
Det er faen meg ikke mulig
!” He had a sudden crazy notion to take the papers, shove them into the garbage, and make breakfast as though nothing had happened.

But just then Lena walked sleepily out of the bedroom. She rubbed at her hair, yawned, then looked at him. “What is it, Torgrim?”

He led her to one of the stools at the kitchen counter and placed the contents of the envelope before her. She read the itinerary, then the message. Slowly, with a trembling finger, she touched the black letters.

“Is it his writing?” Rygg asked, though he knew the answer already. She nodded, and a tear splashed onto the paper.

“I don’t understand,” he said.

“I also,” she whispered.

“So what do we do?”

She looked up at him, as if confused by the question. “What do we do? We go to Bujumbura, of course. At seven o’clock in this evening.”

Chapter 26

Burundi

May 20

Between bouts of
sleeping and staring out the window and chewing his way through the tasteless airplane food and going over possible scenarios with Lena, Rygg managed to get almost the whole way through
Anna Karenina
on the three plane trips. He had just one chapter to go when the little four-prop plane they’d boarded in Nairobi scooted down over a ridge of mountains, across a lake, and onto the landing strip. The airport was a cluster of three white domes that echoed the hills behind. There was just one other plane on the strip, and their plane drove right up to the doors of the airport. They walked down the steps, into balmy, humid air, and a scent of kerosene and coffee and tropical flowers. Lena took his hand as they walked across the tarmac and through the doors. The immigration official stamped their passports and waved them through.

And there he was; a small haggard-eyed man in a plain blue shirt and khaki trousers, standing to one side of the lounge. Lena ran toward him and Marin smiled and opened his arms. For a long time, they embraced on the tiled floor, swaying slightly from side to side, while the other passengers – women in colorful headdresses and men in shiny suit jackets – passed around them, looking at them curiously. Lena pulled back, took Marin’s head in both her hands and kissed his lips, then slapped his cheek, quite hard. He laughed and gripped her wrists. Turning to Rygg, he said: “Torgrim, welcome to Bujumbura!” And Rygg just stood there grinning at him. It was impossible to feel any jealousy – Marin was so small and sincere.

In the taxi, Marin refused to say anything at all, except: “Wait … wait.” The taxi took them down along the lake, to a place called “Chez Eveline,” where a dozen thatched gazebos were scattered about a lawn. They took seats around a wooden table in one of the gazebos and Marin ordered beers. And not until the cold Amstels arrived did he look at them, with a smile that contained even more sadness than usual.

“So,” he said. “You want the story, of course. And you want to know why you are here in Burundi. In the center of Africa.”

Rygg took a sip of beer. It tasted great. “What we’re really curious about, Marko,” he said, “is how you managed the whole resurrection thing. We saw your fucking
body
. We saw you
dead
.”

“Yes. I am sorry you had to go through that. But it was truly the only way to get you out of Sokolov’s hands without rousing his suspicions. Your emotions had to be genuine, you see.” He traced a line through the beads of perspiration on the outside of his glass. “It was, of course, not my body.”

“So who on earth …” He had a sudden vision of Marin ransacking the Cypriot morgue.

“It was Sasha.”

Lena put her hands to her mouth.

“
Fytti helvette
!” said Rygg.

Marin nodded. “Yes. I had begun to suspect him, even before we got to Cairo. But I was not sure until we got to Cyprus. There I set a little trap for him – I told him a small lie, but a crucial one. When we were in the room together, after you had gone to the port and the airport, I told him that I had arranged for a private boat to take us to Athens after I published my article. I knew this was information he would have to pass immediately to his supervisor. So I left the room. I said I was going to the bathroom, but I looked through the hole of the key. And I saw him. I saw him immediately go to the computer and type in a quick message. While he was still typing, I opened the door, and he quickly shut down the window. But later, while he was sleeping, I found the message. It was to Sokolov.

“Anyway, I received your information. I published, as I am sure you discovered. And immediately afterward, Torgrim, I took your motorcycle and Sasha and I drove up to Platres, to the chapel of Santa Nikolaiou. There, of course, Sasha met with an unfortunate accident. You perhaps did not notice that as my alter ego Alex in Moscow I had dyed and cut my hair to resemble his. Sasha, like me, was thin and white-skinned. We have only one inch apart in height. But our faces are of course very different. I exchanged clothes with him. But I was forced to destroy his face.”

Marin took a sip of his beer.

Rygg shook his head slowly. “You are a cold-blooded fucker, did you know that, Marko?”

“Everything was necessity.”

“Okay. Okay. I see that you’ve been ahead of everyone here, including Sokolov. But there’s still something I’m not getting.”

“What is that?”

“Why did Sokolov let you publish? Why didn’t he nab you before that? Or have Sasha knock you off?”

Marin nodded. “This, of course, is why we are in Bujumbura,” he said. “This afternoon we have an appointment to meet someone who will have very interesting information for us.”

“Who is it?” Lena asked.

“His name is Dmitri.”

After lunch, they took a taxi up into the hills behind Bujumbura, winding through mango groves and little coffee plantations. They went through three checkpoints – just ropes stretched across the road, manned by drunken soldiers, who haggled with the driver for a few minutes, until he slipped some cash into their hands. At intervals, battered vans passed them. Behind every van, clinging to door handles and hinges, were bicyclists with stems of green bananas on their heads. And occasionally, unburdened bicyclists would zip past them in the opposite direction, huge cigarettes of raw tobacco twisted into corn husks clenched between their teeth.

Soon the air was cooler, and they passed girls holding out baskets containing mushrooms as big as their heads. The hills were a patchwork of little cultivated plots and thatched huts, between which women walked with babies strapped to their backs and baskets on their heads: storybook Africa. After forty minutes or so, they got to a town called Gitega. There was a central market filled with goats and squawking chickens and hillocks of beans spread on burlap sacking. Marin gave the driver directions in French, and they moved through the town, to a hill on its outskirts. On top of the hill, behind a fence of bamboo slats, was a bungalow of cut stone. A tree with flowers like flames leaned over its tiled roof. The lawn was perfectly trimmed.

They crunched over the gravel driveway, got out of the car, and went up to the door. Marin knocked cautiously. An improbably beautiful woman opened it. She was tall and willowy, with sepia skin and sleepy eyes. “
Oui
?” she said. “
Je peux vous aider
?”

Marin told her that they were there to see Dmitri and she shrugged. “
Attendez
,” she said. And a moment later, a boy who looked to be in his late teens came to the door. He had an unruly thatch of blond hair, but his eyes were older than his face. Rygg thought he recognized him from somewhere, but couldn’t think where. The boy stood looking at them for a minute, his hand on the doorknob, as though he were thinking about shutting it again. Then he sighed and stood back.

He led them right through the house, which was decorated with masks and spears and delicately carven bas reliefs of Burundian village scenes, and out double doors onto a veranda. Cane chairs were scattered around a low glass-topped table. The view, past the lawn and a couple bougainvillea bushes, was spectacular: hills receding into the distance, every shade of blue, with tendrils of smoke rising here and there. “Nice,” said Rygg, standing at the edge of the veranda and looking out.

Dmitri smiled at him and suddenly Rygg snapped his fingers and pointed at him. “I know,” he said. “I’ve got it! You were the boy in that picture with Yuri.”

“What?” said Marin.

“You remember. One of those pictures we got from Yuri, he was standing in front of the boat, with another sailor.”

Dmitri nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Yuri was my friend. You know him?”

“I met him,” Rygg said.

“And how is he?”

“Uh … he’s dead, I’m afraid. He was shot in Hamburg.”

Dmitri’s mouth worked, and he looked as if he were going to start crying.

“Sorry, man,” Rygg said.

It took a couple minutes before Dmitri was able to look up at them. “I am sorry,” he said. “I am still … it is still difficult for me. I am emotional. What would you like to drink?”

The willowy girl brought them vodka and fresh passion fruit juice and set out a platter of cheeses and crackers. Dmitri poured and handed out glasses. Then he sat back and looked at Marin.

“So,” he said. “The agreement?”

“Yes. I will make sure that your mother and brother are moved to a new house in Kaliningrad and that your mother receives the treatment she needs.”

“And there is no possibility that my name will be connected with your report?”

“None.”

Dmitri nibbled at a slice of gruyère thoughtfully, looking out at the hills. “This is Ludo’s place,” he said. “But I think I’ll find my own, close by. It’s nice here. I like waking up in the morning and drinking my coffee looking out at the hills. The girls are pretty. I might start a small coffee farm. Burundian coffee is the best, did you know that? Twenty dollars a kilo on the international market.”

“You deserve it,” said Marin. “After what you’ve been through, you deserve everything.”

“Okay,” Dmitri said. “Okay. I’ve read your reports, of course, like everyone else. You did amazing work, I have to say. Amazing.”

“I thank you.” Marin lit a cigarette and sat back.

“It was just over a week ago, wasn’t it? Just over a week ago that we got into Larnaca port. I’ve been here for five days, but already it seems like a lifetime.” He paused, and looked out at the hills again. Then he sighed. “Your report made a lot of sense. I read it the day after we got off the boat – we all read it. The Siberians were used as scapegoats, to allow the Israelis to escape detection. Yes. The missiles were headed to Iran. Yes. A deal was done between Israel and Russia to allow them to return the missiles without the international attention. Yes. But then …”

Marin just smoked and watched him. Inside the house, some busy, guitar-heavy music was playing on a scratchy radio.

Looking out at the hills, Dmitri told his story. He and the rest of the crew had been put up in a nice hotel in the center of the city. The agents watched them, but didn’t seem that concerned – they’d all signed the agreement. Anyway, what motivation did they have to release the information? Dmitri had a room with Ilya. He was unpacking his bag, after the first night, and realized that he had forgotten his cross – the little silver cross with a few bits of amber that had been his grandfather’s and then his father’s. It had been through two wars. He’d forgotten it on a hook in the galley. He told Ilya and was in some distress. Ilya, always a bit crazy, said he’d cover for Dmitri if he wanted to slip out. So that night, they made a fake Dmitri under the sheet, with a rolled carpet and a mop. And about two in the morning, he climbed across three balconies, around to the fire escape, and down to the street. He wandered down to the port – he still had his pass – they hadn’t thought to take it away. He went in, expecting to see all kinds of guards around the
Alpensturm
, or at any rate the journalists, but the
Alpensturm
wasn’t there.”

Marin leaned forward abruptly. “What?” he said.

“It wasn’t there,” Dmitri repeated. “Berth 42C. Nothing. Empty. Well, I guessed it had sailed – where to I couldn’t imagine, and with what crew. I was sad, because the cross was precious to me. But I shrugged and started walking back along the wharf.”

Dmitri looked at his guests, smiling gently at them. “I was about to go out of the gate again, when I saw something. Right at the far end of the port, over where the beat-up ships got worked on there were always a couple half-sunk hulks. I saw a little cluster of aerials. And I knew those aerials, the way you know a friend from his walk, even from a distance. Keeping to the shadows, I crept up to the ship. Sure enough, it was the
Alpensturm
– I could have sworn to it. Same portholes, same size. But the name was painted out. They’d moved the ship and changed her name to the
Diana
.”

Dmitri went on to share how he was crouching behind a dumpster, looking at the ship, wondering if it would be safe to try to get on board, when a truck drove in – one of those monsters they use for cargo. It parked right beside the ship and turned the lights off. Then they started to offload the truck. But in the
dark
. “In the fucking dark.” Dmitri shook his head. “Usually we have spotlights all over. But even the port lights beside the ship were off. There was just the yellow beacon on the top aerial. I couldn’t see who was doing the work, or what exactly they were loading, except that they needed a crane. There were twelve objects. I don’t know what they were – they were long, that was all I could see.”

“How long?” Marin interjected.

Dmitri shrugged. “Maybe twice as tall as a man. I couldn’t say for sure. It was dark, as I said. Anyway, I stayed until they got them all on board and the truck drove off again. Then I went back to the hotel. Things were looking fishy and I wasn’t going to risk my life for a cross.” He glanced at Marin, with an almost pleading look in his eyes.

Marin leaned forward and slowly spread some camembert on a cracker, getting it out to the edges, making sure it was just right. While they all watched him, he ate it slowly, then washed it down with a swig of vodka and brushed a crumb from his finger. He looked as if he was going to say something. But suddenly he began to laugh. In the month and a half he’d known him, Rygg couldn’t remember seeing Marin laugh before – certainly not with this abandon anyway. He had a pleasant, easy laugh that crinkled the corners of his eyes. Throwing his head back, he closed his eyes, let his arms hang loose by his sides, and just laughed and laughed. And after a minute, they joined him, even Dmitri, though they hardly knew why.

Finally Marin dropped his head and clasped his hands across his chest. He shook his head. “Sokolov,” he said. “Sokolov.”

“What is it, Marko?” Lena asked.

“We were outmaneuvered. It was a chess game. I thought I had achieved checkmate, but he had the last move. And we lost.”