Chasing the Storm (9 page)

Lying in bed, sopping with sweat, he wondered if it would ever end. Already, Kaliningrad seemed like a past life. It was strange how tedious the routine had become. However, he was unprepared for the havoc the morning would bring.

It was mid-morning, and Dmitri and Ilya were making bread, kneading the dough in two huge, separate batches. Dmitri slowly became aware that the murmur of voices from the deck was growing louder. The kitchen commando ran off, and Ilya crept up to the top of the steps, with Dmitri telling him to be careful. But the shouting rapidly crescendoed, and Ilya motioned him to come up. Dmitri crawled up the stairs and cautiously poked his head out above Ilya’s. Four commandos were in the glassed control room: two elites and two Siberians. The Siberians were shouting at the elites, and one of them brandished his machine gun over his head. Dmitri caught the word ‘drugs’ and something about time. But as they watched, three more elites dashed onto the deck and up the stairs. One kicked his way through the door and, with the butt of his gun, bashed the shouting Siberian on the back of the neck. The commando crumpled immediately, dropping below the edge of the window, and there was a moment of complete silence. Dmitri immediately slithered back down the stairs, but Ilya kept watching. Dmitri heard a series of bumps, as though someone was beating on the metal deck with a mallet. After an interval of a minute, there was a splash. Immediately, Ilya slid down into the galley, and started kneading the dough violently.

“What was it?” Dmitri whispered. “What happened?”

But Ilya jerked his elbow into his ribs, and he realized that the kitchen commando was at his post again.

Not until the next morning did he find out what had happened: the shouting commando had been dragged down the stairs by his heels. His clothes were stripped off him and he was dumped overboard. But by that time, Dmitri had already figured out that dynamics had shifted on board. The gray brothers, who up until now had eaten with the rest of the crew, though they had their own room together, had suddenly joined the commandos. At breakfast, Alexei, the tall brother, was watching over them, with one of the elites. Two of the Siberians seemed to have been relegated to crewmember status, because they were sitting with them at the table. One bore an enormous, messy bruise on his cheekbone. The skin had split and was curled back from the wound. The other’s hand was bandaged. They ate sullenly, not looking up from their plates.

April 29

Rygg slept from seven-thirty in the evening to six-thirty the next morning, and woke feeling as though he’d been fused to the cot. He pried himself loose and stumbled out to the main room. It was empty, but there was the ever-present coffee pot on the table. Through the window, he saw Marin sitting on the top rung of the fence like a schoolboy, looking up at the mountains. Steam rose from one fist, smoke from the other.

Rygg joined him. He leaned his elbows on the splintery wood and sipped his coffee. “You’re up early,” he said and Marin laughed shortly. Rygg looked at him. Marin’s face was grayer than usual, and his eyes were sunk in pockets of purple shadow. “You haven’t been to sleep, have you?” Rygg accused.

Marin dropped his butt on the ground. He took a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket and tapped one up and lit it. There were five butts on the scuffed earth beneath the fence.

“Sasha and I were doing some investigations in the night,” he said. “We got onto a trail, and had to find out where it led.”

“And where did it lead?”

Marin did not answer for a minute. He sipped his coffee, then set the mug on the post beside him.

“Torgrim,” he said. “You arrived for me like an angel, in the square, in Orfeoplatz. I owe you my life. And now you have given us a greater gift. Your work in Hamburg has shown us what we are dealing with. This is news of enormous importance, I can assure you. However, it is also very dangerous. Simply the knowledge that twelve S-400 missiles are on the ship is like a target posted to your back. And now, I am afraid, they know who you are. They know your name, they know your work, they know everything about you. What Sasha was able to discover they will be able to discover, easily. Except, perhaps, your whereabouts at this minute.”

“What are you saying?”

“I am saying that I have put your life in danger, and I am distressed and sorry.”

Rygg shrugged. “I’ve been through worse,” he said. “I’ll deal with it.”

Marin seemed not to have heard him. “However, we have put in place some measures.”

“Yes?”

“There are … we have done some things – ‘pulled some strings’, I think the English say – to demonstrate that you were not in Hamburg.”

“They were in the hotel room, Marin. It’s over.”

“Already the records of your stay at the hotel have been wiped. We have intercepted a message from their Hamburg agent – in fact, the woman who came after you on Speicherstadt – and altered it slightly, to the effect that she was mistaken. It was not in fact Torgrim Rygg she saw outside the Café Mendelssohn, but a man with a mustache and yellow hair. We have provided evidence that you were at a meeting in Langenfelde.”

“
Jøss
! You can do that?”

“There is no privacy anymore, as I told you.”

“So I’m in the clear?”

“As clear as we can make it. The funds have been transferred to your account. You will find an airline ticket to Oslo in your suitcase.”

“For when?”

“For this evening.”

Rygg was silent. He held the mug against his lower lip, letting the steam waft up against his cheek. A breeze had risen, and the spume of cloud along the snowcaps was already eroding. It was going to be a pretty day.

“Is that what you were doing all night?”

“No, we accomplished this in the evening.”

“So what kept you up?”

Marin got down from his perch. He leaned back against the fence and crossed his arms. “Now that you are no longer in our employ, so to speak, Torgrim,” he said, “I do not wish to further encumber you. You know, better than me perhaps, that information is the equivalent of a weapon. Like a bomb in your pocket.”

“
Slutt å kødde
. Don’t fuck around with me, Marin. You’re onto something, aren’t you? Tell me what it is.”

Marin nodded. “We are onto something.”

“And you’re not going to let me in on it?”

Marin shook his head.

“But the pictures,” Rygg said. “Yuri’s photo. Wasn’t that enough? You know it’s the S-400.”

“In my line of journalism it is not enough, I am afraid. Images, and especially digital images, are not considered evidence these days. I am certain that the
Alpensturm
is carrying a load of twelve S-400 missiles. But before I make my report, I need to know who is behind the transaction, and where the shipment is heading.”

Rygg looked up at the mountains again. A sudden image of the gray screen in his cubicle at Aker Brygge, the scrolling numbers, floated against the backdrop of clouds and forest. It made him nauseous to think of flying back into Oslo, jerking with the traffic along the highway to Drammen, past the silos and old factories, to his grim apartment. Suddenly he heaved himself free of the fence and stood before Marin.

“I’m not going back,” he said. He brandished his mug at Marin, who looked very small and pale in the sunshine.

“I think you will be safe; do not worry.”

“You don’t understand. I’m not going back there. You need someone. You need someone like me, someone with my experience. Someone with my background. Someone anonymous – that’s what you said.”

“You are not anonymous any longer.”

“I’m with you now, Marko. I’m involved. You can’t get rid of me.”

“But your job—”

“
Drit i det
. Fuck that. I’m not going back to that hellhole. I’ve decided
that
for sure.”

Marin looked up at him, and within his haggard face his eyes were bright. “I will not deceive you, Torgrim. Some part of me wished you would stay with us. But I did not have a very big hope.”

“I’m yours for as long as you need me. Let’s get this job done.”

Over breakfast, Marin told Rygg and Lena what they had discovered during the night.

“Before you left, I told you that the
Alpensturm
had reappeared in the Dover straits.”

“I remember that,” Rygg said.

“It reappeared for a few hours, long enough to give a signal, and then disappeared again.”

“So how does that help us?”

“Well, it informs us that the ship is heading south, as I told you, and probably into the Mediterranean. But what we have been working at for the last five days is trying to establish the identity of the spotter.”

“Spotter?” Rygg asked. “Like the guy who assigns targets for the sniper?”

Marin had dismantled a piece of bread, pulling off the crusts. He shook his head without looking up. He dabbed his hand along the edge of the bread. “Along the English coast, a leftover from World War II, there are several watching stations. They look out to sea and check the identity of the passing ships. Each is staffed by spotters, who work in shifts. At any time, one spotter is on duty. They have a nice life, I think – like the life of a lighthouse keeper. Maybe a bit lonely. They read their books, they drink their tea, they look out at the waves, and when a ship passes they record the number.”

“Can you get for me this work?” Lena asked.

Marin looked at her and put a hand tenderly over hers. “Lena is a bit stressed up.”

“Stressed out.”

“Stressed
out
, yes. She thinks I should take a break. A holiday. But there is no time. No time.” He said something to her in Russian and she looked down at her cup, then out the window.

Marin went on. “Now, we found the station which received the signal from the
Alpensturm
. Okay. And we have been trying to discover who the person on duty that evening was. Finally yesterday we found out that it was a woman named Ann Devonshire. She is forty-one, she has worked at this job for five years. She lives in Dover town, she has two Labradors that she walks along the cliffs and she likes to play Scrabble with her friend. Quite a normal person. And, like many quiet English ladies, she takes her holidays in England. She goes to Lake Windermere for a week, or to Cornwall. Once, for an adventure, she went on a holiday to Paris. For one weekend, only. This occurred three years ago, but she mentions it in many of her emails even now.”

“Did you talk to her?” Rygg asked.

Marin shook his head. “She disappeared.”

“What!” Rygg exclaimed.

Lena looked sharply over at Marin. “They kill her?” she asked.

“This is what we thought, me and Sasha,” he said. “We thought she had been murdered. So we were searching, searching, for any mention of a body, of people missing her. Then finally Sasha thought to check flight records. Listen. This is what we discovered: on the morning of the 26th, two days after she spotted the
Alpensturm
, Ann Devonshire took an airplane flight to Athens. She spent one night in Athens. The next morning, she got on a ferry bound for Paros.”

“Paros? Next to Crete, right?”

“It’s about midways between the mainland and Crete.”

“So she needed a vacation.”

“Well. Perhaps. But there are two interesting factors. Besides that she had only once previously visited outside her country. Listen. Only three weeks before, she had finished her holiday, of two weeks, in Yorkshire.”

“So she needed another break.”

“Maybe. But here is the other information. In one year, as an employee of the British Coast Guard, she is only allowed two weeks for holiday. She has already been on Paros for five days.”

Rygg nodded slowly. “So you think …”

“Yes. I think she has been quickly taken out of the way. To a place where no journalist can reach her.” The corners of his mouth dented, and he cocked his eyebrows slightly.

Lena looked at him. Then she laughed. He patted her thigh and nodded. “Lena may get her holiday after all,” he said.

“So when do we leave?” she asked.

Marin gave his little shrug. “I was thinking after lunch.”

As an afterthought, Rygg was curious about his own involvement. “Will they think anything of me showing up there, or even know? They seem to know everything that is going on.”

“Yes, but it is my hope that your skills will get us what we need before that’s a real concern.”

“Will I have an alias?” Rygg asked, impressed by Marin’s keen attention to detail.

“No, we need you to be just who you are.”

“Be careful what you ask for,” he responded, laughing.

Chapter 8

Paros

May 1

Paros town was
a charming collection of whitewashed houses with blue doors. The air was delicious: warm and soft and scented with oregano. After a day and night on the ferry, they had flown in from Athens on a little plane called a ‘mosquito’ and taken a taxi into the town.

They walked along the seafront a little way until they found a restaurant. It was an open-air platform overlooking the marina, with a loosely woven fabric of grapevines overhead. A drunken man ambled down the steps and put his arm around Rygg’s shoulders. He was wearing shorts and a torn T-shirt. Rygg tried to shrug him off, but the man pulled him up the stairs and shoved him into a chair. He kicked other chairs around the table and bowed to Lena. “
Princessa!
” he said, and she giggled. The drunken waiter uncorked a bottle of white wine and poured their glasses full, then passed menus around. The menus were photocopied sheets of paper, cased in stapled plastic bags.

“Well,” Marin said, raising his glass. “
Yiamas
!”

Rygg took one sip of his wine, then held the glass at arm’s length and looked at it. “
Hva faen?
” he asked.

“Retsina,” Marin told him. “The taste is from resin. Originally the wine was kept in barrels of pine, so it took on the flavor. Now they simply add it to white wine.”

Rygg took another sip. It was like swallowing the sun. He nodded. “Strong, but I think I could get used to this.” He looked at the menu. It was incomprehensible. “You’ll have to order for me,” he said.

The food, when it arrived, was wonderful. Kleftiko turned out to be roast lamb with dill and feta cheese. There was a thick slab of moussaka, and an earthenware bowl of a stew with carrots and potatoes that Lena called stamnas. There were also stuffed tomatoes and a platter of chunky golden French fries.

When the coffee arrived, Marin leaned his elbows on the table. He seemed a little embarrassed. “Torgrim,” he said. “Do you like to flet?”

“What?”

“Flet. You know flet? Flet with girls?”

“Flirt, you mean?”

“Yes. Flirt, flirt. Sorry, my pronunciation is not excellent.”

“Do I like to flirt?”

“Yes.”

“Well. I suppose so. More when I was younger.” Rygg was mystified.

“Good. You are a handsome man. Am I wrong?” Marin turned to Lena, and she looked across at Rygg seriously.

“Very handsome,” she said, with not the slightest trace of irony.

“Okay,” Rygg said, raising both hands. “I’m flattered. Now what the fuck are you talking about?”

“Ann Devonshire is a single woman, Torgrim, you see. She is, she is not pretty, but …”

“Hold on a moment. You want me to – to
flirt
…”

“Yes. Miss Devonshire is here to have a good time. We want her to have a good time, you see. With a big, handsome,
very
rich
Norwegian oil executive.”

Rygg had to lean back and chuckle for a couple seconds. “Why me?” he said. “Why don’t you do it?”

“I am small.”

“Fuck you!” Rygg said. “I signed up on this adventure because of my combat skills, not because of my looks.”

“Torgrim,” Marin said. “We need you now. Will you help us?”

The courtship of Ann Devonshire began that very evening. She was staying at the Aphrodite, which, Marin informed Rygg, was the plushest hotel on the island. It had a lobed pool surrounded by masses of magenta flowers, tennis courts, a nine-hole golf course out back, and opened onto its own private beach. They checked in that afternoon, taking separate taxis. Marin and Lena had a room on the first floor. Rygg was on the third floor, just two doors down from Miss Devonshire.

Marin had given Rygg a little briefing over their coffee. As far as Rygg was concerned, Marin and Lena were just two more guests at the hotel. Rygg was here on vacation, straight from meetings in Hamburg, looking for a little fun, maybe a little companionship. After all, it was the type of place that lent credibility to promises of romance.

Rygg took a shower and spruced himself up. They had gone on a little shopping expedition in Paros town, during which he’d acquired a couple flowered shirts, a swimsuit, a white golfer’s cap, and cologne. Marin handed him a package just before they parted, telling Rygg to open it in his room. It turned out to be a Scrabble set. Rygg had forgotten how to play, and as he sipped a brandy on the balcony, he read through the rulebook. Didn’t seem that hard. He picked up a Scrabble piece and turned it over. J – 8 points. “What the fuck am I doing?” he muttered. “I’m a soldier, not a fucking Scrabble-playing gigolo.” But then he thought about the office and the scrolling numbers. He could be doing worse things with his time.

He looked down at the pool. His quarry was a pink smear on a blue-striped beach chair, with three yellow triangles of cloth dabbed over her boiled flesh.

He took
Anna Karenina
, which he’d bought in Athens, down to dinner, arriving forty-five minutes after it had started, as Marin had instructed. Marin and Lena were bending toward each other over a bottle of wine and paid him no attention. Ann Devonshire was sitting by herself at a round table near the window. She had a book flattened facedown beside her plate, but was looking out the window when he came in. Sitting at the table next to hers, he leveled a gaze in her direction, caught her attention, and her eyes bounced around the room in panic. Terrified, she turned the book up and pretended to read. She wasn’t a pretty girl. Her dishwater hair was bound back with a pink ribbon that precisely matched the boiled hue of her face. Her eyes were puffy and bloodshot, and seemed lashless, and she had no chin: below her mouth, her face rippled smoothly into her throat. Her plump, pouty lips trembled slightly when he glanced at her again over the top of the menu.

Rygg ordered extravagantly –
Remember, you are extremely wealthy
, Marin had told him – and chose the most expensive wine from the list, a 1970 Château Pavie.
Faen heller
.
Fuck it
, he thought. If he was going to play this game, he might as well enjoy himself. The maitre d’ hovered anxiously while Rygg swirled the wine in the glass, peered at it through the light, and took a couple sips. He nodded, said, “It’ll do, thanks,” and opened
Anna Karenina
, holding the book up between him and Ann Devonshire, so that she would be able to note the title and peek at him without the embarrassment of eye contact. The wine was excellent, though he wished he could have ordered the retsina – he could still taste that rough sourness, which seemed distilled from the sun and the sea. But under the circumstances, the Bordeaux was necessary.

When the soup came, he set the book down and ate slowly. After a while, he leaned over to Miss Devonshire and said, in rather a loud voice, “What are you reading there, if I might ask?”

She turned her startled, sunburned eyes to him, and mutely held up the book: a Penguin Classics edition of
The Mill on the Floss
. He’d never heard of it. “I read a lot of the classics myself,” he told her. “The Russians, you know. Chekhov, Tolstoy.”

“I see,” she said primly, and returned to her salad.
Keep pushing it
, he thought.

“Just arrived on the island today,” he continued. “Flew in from Germany.”

She just didn’t know what to do with this information, and placed a palm on her book, then positioned both hands in her lap and stared at her plate.

“Hamburg,” he went on. He was enjoying her embarrassment. “I was giving a presentation there. I’m in oil, you know. Where are you from?”

She sighed, and he watched her try and fail to find a way out of answering. “I’m from Dover, in England,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

“English, huh? I spent a few years in London, but I’m from across the channel. Norway. My name’s Torgrim. Torgrim Rygg.” He set down his soup spoon and reached across the gap between their tables and she was forced to take his hand. Hers was plump and limp and slightly oily. “What’s your name?” he inquired. “If you don’t mind my asking.”

“Ann.” She was going to give him as little information as she could get away with.

“And how long are you here for, Ann?” he asked. “On the enchanting isle of Paros.” Easy there, he told himself.

“I – I’m not sure. Several days.”

“Well, nice to meet you, Ann. Enjoy your book.”

She nodded in obvious relief.

His prawns arrived and he set to work dismantling them. After a while he looked up. Marin and Lena were just leaving, arm in arm. They didn’t glance back as they walked out the door.

May 2

He didn’t make his move until the next day, late morning. He had strolled on the beach for a while, picking up flat stones and flicking them across the waves. He passed Lena where she was laying on a towel, her hair almost the color of the sand, but she didn’t even wink. As he was returning to the hotel, he spotted Ann Devonshire sitting with her back to an olive tree, still immersed in
The Mill on the Floss
. She was wearing a filmy beach dress splashed with purple stars. Ovals of sieved sunlight swam on her skin. He flopped down on the sand beside her.

“Do you play Scrabble?” he asked, looking out at the green surf. On the horizon, he could see a couple more islands, like a thickening of the oxygen.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh, Scrabble, yes I do, actually. I
love
Scrabble.”

“Hey, that’s excellent. I’ve got a set with me. You want to get together after lunch and play a game?”

“Well, I don’t know, Mr… .”

“Torgrim’s the name. Call me Torgrim. Come on, one game. I’m sure you’ll beat me.”

“Well, I suppose that would be all right.”

“After lunch then, yes?” And he was off, taking it slow, doing the John Wayne amble in case she was watching.

But at lunch, he slid into the chair across from her at her round table. “You don’t mind, do you, Ann?” he asked, very serious, laying a hand on hers.

She said, “Yes, I mean no, of course not,” and her cheeks deepened to plum.

She had already ordered a glass of wine, but when it came, Rygg seized the waiter’s shoulder and asked him to take it back and bring a bottle of what he’d had last night.

“Life is too short, Ann,” he told her, shaking his head sorrowfully. “Life is too short to drink house wine. And this wine, this Bordeaux, it’s the real thing, let me tell you. There are some areas where I’m deficient. I’m a terrible Scrabble player, for example, as you will find out. But I do know about wine.”

When the wine came, he started talking about Hamburg, then described his job, transforming his screen and scrolling numbers into magic. “I love it!” he exclaimed. “I make mountains of money. I get to influence world affairs. Finance ministers call me up. ‘Torgrim,’ they say, ‘what do you think of Venezuela? What do you think of the oil sands of Alberta?’ And I have the information. I can tell them what they need to know.” This fabrication was based on one occasion on which an elegant gentleman from the Singapore Ministry of Finance had sought his opinion on a stock purchase. “And then I get to travel all over, meet interesting people. Like yourself.” Her blushes came and went like rosy shadows; her eyes didn’t seem quite so red today. “So Ann, tell me about yourself, what do you do?” he asked.

“Oh, I’m nothing, actually,” she said, looking down at her wine. “I work for the British Coast Guard.”

“Are you married?”

She clutched at her napkin for support. “No,” she said.

“I must say, I find that surprising.”

“Really? Why?” There was a naked eagerness in her glance.

“Well, an attractive, cultured woman like you … something must have happened. I’m divorced, myself,” he grimaced.

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.” She seemed thrilled.

He shrugged. “It happens. She had her own career. No kids, thankfully.” He felt a little twinge at doing away with his daughter so deftly. “So, the British Coast Guard, eh? Sounds exciting. Tell me about it. Do you go on search teams?”

“No, no. Nothing that thrilling, I’m afraid.”

She told him a little about her job, perched above the Dover cliffs in a glassed chamber, with her headphones on, scanning the sea. “It’s frightfully boring, actually, I mean, most people might find it boring, but I adore it. I adore cycling out there every morning, through the grass, and hearing the seagulls. And I like listening to the voices from the ships, and typing in the codes. It makes me feel I’m part of something larger.”

“Fascinating.”
Don’t seem too interested
, he told himself.
Let her come to you
. “So what have you seen on Paros?”

“Oh, nothing at all, I’m afraid. I went into the town one morning.”

“So you haven’t visited the famous butterflies?”

“What butterflies are those?”

“The Valley of the Butterflies? Apparently people come to Paros just to see it.”

“The Valley of the Butterflies …” Her voice had a faraway tone.

“Hey, let’s go. After our Scrabble game, of course.”

“Yes. After Scrabble …”

He had brought the Scrabble set with him. After lunch, she ordered tea and he had coffee and they played. She was a magnificent player. All her quivery indecisiveness vanished once she started clicking the little square tablets onto the board. She came up with words he’d never heard of: tig, jottle, aa, qat.

“Qat!” he exclaimed, genuinely bemused, and irked because the q had landed on a triple letter score. “Qat? Now that
can’t
be a word. There’s always a u after a q, isn’t there?”

“Qat,” she informed him, serious, but with a little triumphant crinkle at the corners of her mouth, “is a mildly narcotic herb. They chew the stems in some countries. Yemen, I believe.”

“Aha. Khat! You learn something new every day,” he said, putting down ‘shirt’ for a score of six. “Have you chewed this qat stuff? I don’t think you’re allowed to use names of narcotic herbs unless you’ve actually sampled them.”

“Your English is very good, Torgrim. For a foreigner, I mean.”

After she’d trounced him 619 to 84, Rygg called the waiter over and asked him about the Valley of the Butterflies.