Killing Pilgrim (33 page)

They were silent for a while, smoking cigarettes. The older man seemed lost in introspection. Della Torre sensed a weakening. The Montenegrin couldn’t defeat age. The skin on his forearms had become a little looser, the face lined and burnt brown by the sun. Had he started to regret a life of constant secret war?

“Tell me about Pilgrim.”

“What?” The Montenegrin was startled into sudden vigilance, sitting up smartly, his eyes narrowed. “Where did you hear of Pilgrim?”

“It was in some files. Just a passing mention. Cross-referenced to you,” della Torre said, taken aback by the other man’s sudden intensity.

“It was nothing,” he said abruptly and then softened. “When I first met you —”

“In London?”

“Yes, in London, I felt . . . how can I say . . . regretful to have engaged you in the operation.”

“Svjet?”

“Yes. It had to be done. And I tried to keep you out of it as much as possible. You were never meant to be more than a messenger boy. But . . .” He raised his hands, palms upward, leaving the thought unspoken.

Della Torre finished it for him: “But the job needed doing.”

Della Torre wondered whether his younger self had been very different from Gorki’s boy. Another useful pawn in the game
UDBA
played. And the Montenegrin played the game professionally. Rare was the day when Svjet didn’t sneak through della Torre’s thoughts like a rat at a Christmas feast, making him shudder . . . Svjet had been in his late fifties, not much older than the Montenegrin was now, but had already slipped into decrepitude. Harmless. He’d taught della Torre to love late Beethoven. And in return, della Torre had helped to destroy him. Who had Gorki’s boy helped the Montenegrin to destroy?

“It can be quiet here, especially in the winter.” The Montenegrin spoke quietly. “There’s snow at the tops of the mountains, and it’s cold; the whole bowl of the bay here fills with mist. It’s like an army of ghosts. It seeps into your skin. Long evenings you spend talking to your memories.”

“Yes.” Della Torre understood. However much he struggled with Svjet’s memory, the Montenegrin would be torn at by legions.

“Gringo, I’ve had a soft spot for you since then. You’ve always been a man of conscience. And don’t think I haven’t been grateful for the times when those people in Belgrade wanted an excuse to use me as their sacrificial goat. You were a thin defence against their lies, but it was all I had, and it worked. So I thank you.” One of the reasons the Montenegrin had retired was because the Yugoslav government had begun to cast around for someone to blame for its murderous programs. Della Torre investigated assassinations. Not all were clean, but the Montenegrin had been scrupulous.

Della Torre lit a cigarette and offered one to the other man, who declined.

The Montenegrin sat back in his chair and watched della Torre against the sounds of the night. In the house a washing machine had flipped into the spin cycle, and somewhere across the bay a 50 cc motorbike could be heard going through the gears. The Montenegrin drank back his spirit.

“It’s important that you not ask too much about Pilgrim, Gringo. For your own good.”

Della Torre didn’t mention that someone had already tried to kill him over the file. That however much he might want it to go away, Pilgrim would nag at him.

“Gringo, believe me, if I could help, I would.” The Montenegrin stood up, unaffected by the evening’s drinking. “Now it’s late. My men will be here soon and I have some things to prepare. Get some sleep and pity me while you enjoy your breakfast. Especially if it’s raining. It was good to see you again.” He took della Torre hard by the hand. “Come see me again when you can. I’m afraid there might not be much more opportunity. And give Horvat a bit of advice: tell him to steer clear unless he can swim strong and far. Oh, before I forget — that American redhead of yours. Well, you’re a young man. Take every chance you get while you can. The wife doesn’t need to know everything.” He laughed, though with a certain hollowness.

HELSINGBORG, MARCH 1986

He
was a big young man with red cheeks and an irritated expression. He was bundled up in his practical police uniform parka and a hat that covered his ears.

“You go there,” he said again after the Montenegrin had made it clear he didn’t understand Swedish. “There to behind the car and wait. You show papers.”

He spoke English with difficulty. The Montenegrin had grown so used to the Swedes’ fluency with the language that the young cop’s struggles surprised him.

The Montenegrin nodded and rolled up his window.

He’d started to make mistakes. He’d believed the man at the ticket office about the lack of police scrutiny at the entrance to the ferry. He should have taken a later boat, done reconnaissance on foot to confirm it. But he’d been in a rush to get on the ferry, to get to Denmark. He dug his heel back under the seat to nudge the revolver further out of sight.

In his youth, on weekends, through school and then when on leave from the army, he’d mountaineered with friends all over the Dinaric and Julian Alps, the many sharp limestone peaks. They’d had neither the equipment nor the experience to match professional climbers, though they still managed some dangerous routes. Yet the biggest risks were always coming back down, when they were tired and in a rush to get to their hostel to drink and sing into the small hours. Sometimes they took shortcuts, failed to check their equipment properly. Rope burns and sprains, crushed fingers and cuts from falling rocks were typical. But on one trip a boy had fallen badly, breaking his back. He lay there overnight, in a deep ravine, until a military alpine rescue team could be brought in. The Montenegrin remembered him crying in pain, hour after hour, begging for death. Had he carried a gun then, he might have . . .

The boy walked again, but only after a year in bed and then only stiffly, always in pain.

The Montenegrin’s climbing stopped after that, but it was a lesson he’d always applied to his work: beware the exit.

He could have blamed his lack of attention on fatigue, on the aftermath of the previous night’s adrenaline, on the long drive and the little pills he’d used to stay awake. It had been too long since he’d been an active operative; maybe it was the stress of having to both plan and act that had made him slip.

But he suspected it had been something else. Killing the boy had distracted him. From the first day, he’d thought hard about what he’d do with him. He hadn’t wanted the boy involved at all, but, well, there he’d been from the start — useful, involved, a gift from the gods. And then one to be sacrificed back to them.

As discreet as he seemed, the boy would have eventually guessed what had happened, would have figured out the Montenegrin’s involvement in Palme’s death. The risk was too great, and it was a risk the Montenegrin wasn’t permitted to take. It was a solo job, always had been.

Whatever the source of his error, he had to deal with the fact that the Smith & Wesson was under his seat.

Another policeman was searching a car farther ahead. The driver, a youngish woman, stood by her car door, remonstrating with him, pointing towards the ferry. The policeman shrugged and continued to poke around the car’s boot, his breath steaming in the cold. Farther along, the Montenegrin saw another policeman holding a dog, an Alsatian, on a lead.

His heart sank. He remembered the scraps of hashish the boy had had. They were in the plastic bag in the back of the car.

The young policeman waved the Montenegrin on towards a space behind the woman’s car. The policeman ahead didn’t seem to be very methodical about how he was conducting the search. As far as the Montenegrin could tell, these looked like ordinary traffic cops, not border guards or specialists.

The Montenegrin put the car in gear and gently pressed on the accelerator while letting up on the clutch. The car juddered and stalled. He started again and the same thing happened.

The young policeman came over to him, speaking loudly in Swedish to make himself heard through the closed windows. The Montenegrin shrugged.

The car rattled and shook as he tried to drive forward. He hadn’t stopped for fuel on the way, but the gauge told him he had nearly a quarter of a tank left. Yet the juddering wouldn’t stop.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s happening,” the Montenegrin said, feeling another wave of cold air wash into the car as he rolled down the window.

A third policeman came over and joined the young one standing by the driver’s-side door. By now most of the heat had leaked out of the car. The cold was even more biting here by the sea than inland. This policeman also started speaking Swedish, until the first policeman told him, “English.”

“You have maybe low fuel?”

“No. There’s still diesel in the tank.”

“Ah, engine is maybe cold?” The policeman took his glove off and felt the car’s bonnet, and then shrugged. “You stop engine.”

The Montenegrin turned off the engine. Despite the cold he felt sweat run down along his spine; he felt it form patches on his chest and under his arms. His hand trembled, hovering over the gearshift.

“Now you start engine.” The Montenegrin turned the ignition. The engine caught but ran unevenly, as if it wanted to stall. Ahead, the ferry’s horn sounded, along with an announcement that he couldn’t understand. The younger policeman waved a van around the Montenegrin’s car towards the ferry and then another car, not stopping either of them.

The Swedish policemen spoke to each other and then the one with the dog went towards the back of the car. Had he locked the boot? Was the dog trained to detect drugs? Would there be enough scent in this cold?

The young policeman stood by the passenger-side door, making a motion for the Montenegrin to roll down his window completely. He put his head and one shoulder in through the window. The Montenegrin pushed his heel under the seat, keeping the gun wedged back.

“We push, you drive, soft on clutch. Much gas but soft on clutch. Okay?”

The Montenegrin nodded. He revved the engine and lifted up as gently as he could on the clutch. The engine heaved but the car still managed to move forward. He steered it towards the back of the woman’s car just as she pulled away towards the ferry.

The young policeman ran alongside the car, his shoulder on the door frame.

“You not stop. Go fast now, just go, up into boat,” he said.

The Montenegrin wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly, but the policeman kept waving him on. Maybe the cop didn’t want to organize a tow truck. Better to let the ferry company deal with a breakdown.

“Go now fast, up into boat,” the policeman shouted at him.

A ferry official stood at the side of the boat, arms crossed, watching the events.

The Montenegrin managed to continue his shaky progress, pressing the accelerator until the engine whined, getting enough momentum going to get the car into the ferry’s maw and into an easy spot, moments before the heavy chains started to rattle, lifting the ramp. He caught a glimpse of the policemen looking pink and pleased with themselves, waving him off. He waved his thanks back.

For a long time, the Montenegrin sat in the cold of the car as the ship’s engines sent a deep tremor through him. He sat in awe and fear of his own luck.

Perhaps it would evaporate now. Perhaps the passport people would conduct a search en route, as they did on trains sometimes.

The ship set off.

It wouldn’t be a long passage. Drivers generally stayed in their cars on the ferry, though there was seating up top for foot passengers. There were few vehicles in the hold; it seemed to be a quiet morning. The Montenegrin got out of the car, fished the gun out from under the seat, wrapped it in a chamois cloth, and inserted it into his jacket pocket. He shut the door, not bothering to lock it behind him, and climbed up to the passenger level and then out onto the open deck. The morning was drained of colour apart from a washed-out blueness. The passage of the ship across the strait made a cutting breeze across the deck.

He hadn’t worn his gloves, and his hand stuck where he touched the steel gunwale. The cold burned and he jerked his hand back. He leaned over to where he could see the green-grey water, almost metallic and hard. Beyond the bows, he could see the castle that guarded Helsingborg’s Danish twin, Helsingor, ghosts watching from its parapets. He huddled in his coat, regretting leaving his gloves and hat in the car. The breeze whipped tears from his eyes.

He stood at the rail on the side of the ship and fished a fresh packet of cigarettes from an inside pocket. He lit the cigarette, crumpled the cellophane wrapper and foil paper, and dropped them into the sea. With a cursory look around, he reached into his pocket and took out the chamois-covered gun.

An arm grabbed him, causing him to half-turn and, as he did, to drop the gun on the metal deck with a clank. Stupid of him not to have been more careful. How could he have missed the man in the steward’s uniform?

The steward spoke angrily at him, though the Swedish cadences made it sound almost like a song. Once again the Montenegrin went through the explanation that he understood nothing. The man relented slightly.

“It is forbidden from throwing things off the boat. Forbidden,” he said. “No rubbish in the sea.”

The Montenegrin had trapped the Smith & Wesson under the ball of his foot. Gingerly, like a professional footballer, he got his toes under the gun. As he bent down as if to pick it up, he managed to flip it over the fifteen-centimetre gunwale.

The gun tumbled with a metallic clatter against the side of the ship before it disappeared.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I am very clumsy in this cold. The cigarette paper slipped out. And now I’ve also lost my Thermos. I must remember to wear gloves.”

The man nodded, suddenly sympathetic. “Yes, it happens sometimes. Sometimes people drop cameras too. But usually it is because they are throwing rubbish over the side.”

“No,” the Montenegrin said regretfully. “Now I have no coffee.”

“Come, it is too cold here. We have good coffee. But if you are in a car you must hurry to drink, because we will be in port in twenty minutes. It is too cold to be outside and the news is too terrible.”

“Yes,” the Montenegrin said. “I heard. I am very sorry.”

“We are all very sorry. Many did not like Palme, but for him to be killed is a very bad thing. A very bad thing. Come, I will buy you coffee.”