People had no reason to leave the comfort of their apartments for the darkness outside. Nighttime here was silent and deserted, as if the wide boulevard was uninhabited. Relatively little snow had fallen over the last few weeks, but there was frost on the ground. The earth under the leafless trees was frozen, and crunched beneath Immanuel’s slippery soles. There were lights in some of the windows even though it was approaching midnight, so there must be people behind the grand facades. Farther down the road Immanuel saw an elderly gentleman in a hat walking his dog, but he soon disappeared. The peace was broken only by the occasional passing of a car. The headlights illuminated the trees when they turned the corner from Sturegatan and dazzled him. As the lights swept past, he could see the mist of his breath in the cold.
It was pitch-black on the other side of the avenue, where Stockholm’s Olympic stadium was eerily dark, like an ancient fortress surrounded by forest. Even in daylight the brown brick construction spread an air of gloom.
He was searching for an address in one of the imposing properties just ahead of him, diagonally opposite the somber arena. It was noticeable how much activity there was at this particular spot in the street; cars stopping, people getting out and hurrying through the door. He was so close he could see a chauffeur in uniform in an especially impressive official car drop off two men, who rushed across the pavement, their coats flapping. The car was stationary long enough for him to make out the oval sticker that all embassy vehicles carried. He tried in vain to distinguish the combination of letters.
Immanuel wasn’t dressed for this type of nocturnal escapade. He had left the Bermann Fischers’ musical evening without a plan, still not certain whether he should visit the address Rickman had given him. It was altogether absurd to follow the whims of a man he hardly knew. But now his family’s future was at stake. Why Rickman had insisted on such a late meeting had been unclear from the start, and at the time it seemed more than a little strange. But he had been persistent, and kept repeating that it would pay to meet Mr. Fraser. It was evidently the same Mr. Fraser who had arranged for the whole Bermann Fischer family to obtain their visas for Great Britain in a matter of a few days. Now they wouldn’t have any use for them, of course, but Immanuel had seen the passports and the stamps himself, when Miss Stern from the office collected them. Amid all the gravity, they had joked about there being no room for any more stamps and it was lucky they’d already got rid of the J-stamps, just on the grounds of space. Miss Stern’s passport did have a red J-stamp, and she made a joke about trying to scratch it off.
Was it Fraser he had been introduced to that day at the Opera Bar, when he was offered his position at the publishing house and the Englishmen suddenly appeared? They had been a very merry lot, and Rickman had made toasts and speeches. Immanuel could no longer recall what the man looked like, but it wasn’t impossible that it was this same Fraser, a gentleman who could allegedly provide assistance when it really mattered.
The sky was black, and it was cold. Immanuel hadn’t been capable of gathering his thoughts during the musical evening, but out here in the cold he could at least articulate the purpose of his late-night walk. It was, precisely as Horst had phrased it, in order to keep all doors open. Why close a door that was still ajar? His conversation with Professor Katz had touched on the wildest of escape plans, rather than actual possibilities. The boys must have heard of these plans, perhaps had spoken to the youngest Katz boy, for they were asking questions about Cuba and Shanghai as if they were already preparing for new adventures.
Shanghai? What an unlikely idea! The whole thing had begun as a vague rumor about a place to which anyone could go, where no one needed a visa. The city still had open borders. His colleagues in the office were talking about it, and the rumor spread like wildfire.
Now Immanuel was leaning against the cold facade in a way that made him almost invisible. Soon new cars appeared, sometimes picking up men in their thick winter coats and sometimes dropping them off. Sometimes they came alone, sometimes in groups. He was close enough to make out their faces.
Then the traffic came to a stop. Not a single car to be seen. A few isolated snowflakes floated weightlessly in the soft light around the lamppost on the pavement. He approached the steps cautiously and noted that the door was half open. Could he simply go in, or was there someone watching the entrance from the shadows of the vestibule? Just as he was summoning the courage to go inside, parts of the ground floor suddenly lit up. Now there was no return.
He walked up the few steps to the door, opened it, and found himself in a spacious foyer with more steps leading to a set of glass doors that swayed slowly backward and forward in the draft. He could hear the clatter of footsteps from the staircase, and two women in fur coats came toward him. They were engaged in animated conversation and passed without paying him the least attention. One pushed open the swing doors with a gesture that reminded him of a singer’s flamboyant entrance onto a stage. A few brisk steps later and they opened the main door and went out into the street, where a car was waiting with its lights off. Immanuel hadn’t heard it arrive. The door closed behind them, and all was quiet.
But he could hear the murmur of voices somewhere, maybe from an apartment upstairs. Soon it seemed as though the noise was filling the whole stairwell. He paused on the first floor, and the elevator passed him on its way down. There was a whiff of tobacco in the air. At first it was just a hint, but the higher he went, the stronger the smell became, as if he were nearing some kind of establishment or club. Perhaps a restaurant? They were to meet on the fifth floor, Rickman had said, and added that Immanuel didn’t need to ask for him, because he would look out for him all evening and couldn’t possibly miss him.
It now felt slightly alarming that Rickman had suggested they meet just before midnight in an apartment whose owner wasn’t known to him. He sensed quite clearly that it would have been wiser to return to his sleeping family at home on Frejgatan after the evening at Bermann Fischer’s, instead of setting off on a nocturnal sortie. The boys were sure to be asleep in their room facing the courtyard, and Lucia had probably gone to bed early. Her dizziness had been causing more problems lately. There was no doubt she needed to see a doctor, and they ought to take Lagerberg’s offer of another, more exhaustive examination at Sophiahemmet very seriously. The private hospital wasn’t far from here, somewhere out there in the darkness near the stadium. He should have been devoting all his time to these crucial things, instead of wandering around at night.
Nonetheless, he now stepped resolutely over the threshold to the apartment on the fifth floor, where the door stood wide open and from which a welter of voices clamored.
He pulled a heavy curtain to one side. A naked woman with her hair down was sitting in a dark-blue velvet armchair, immersed in lively conversation with two young officers. They had both removed their jackets, but, judging by the stripe on their trousers, it was obvious that they were in uniform. With wide gestures the woman was expounding on something that appeared to be of moderate interest to the young men. Were they officers, or more likely chauffeurs? Their jerky movements and clumsy handling of glasses and cigarettes indicated that they were extremely drunk. The woman’s long hair swung to and fro, and she kept leaning so far back the armchair tilted dangerously. Her hair brushed against Immanuel’s left arm, in which he was holding the coat he had taken off on the stairs, a coat that was not nearly warm enough for the weather.
No one appeared to notice his presence. He moved around the apartment and noticed groups of men accompanied by women in varying modes of undress, sitting in sofas or armchairs, in rooms separated from each other only by velvet curtains that largely concealed what was happening inside. The smoke in the first of these individual little salons was so dense, it was like staring into a cloud. He rubbed his eyes and made his way deeper into the large apartment. Through the gap between two sliding doors he thought he could see a different room, and when he entered, he discovered a surprisingly spacious atelier. From a high window he saw the lampposts on Vallhallagatan.
The sky was as inky as the woodland surrounding the Olympic stadium on the opposite side of the boulevard. It was impossible to discern a dividing line, as if the wood and the sky were merged into one single state of blackness. It was quite possible this airy studio had once been a workplace for a sculptor or artist, but now it held a circular bar, from which gentle gramophone music was playing. A young man in a white shirt was serving behind the counter, and a number of gentlemen in pairs or small groups were deep in discussion. There were no women to be seen.
Immanuel leaned with his back against the bar. He really wasn’t interested in having a drink. Should he take his leave of this dubious den as quickly as possible? At his side two gentlemen were speaking loudly in German.
“Pajala is the latest, and a few weeks before that, Kallaxheden. And just excuses. Luleå doesn’t have any special significance, strategically, she says. A typical northern Swedish port for the export of sawn timber, the minister claims. Timber! Permit me to smile.”
“Yes, who the dickens does she think she’s fooling? But it might have been the airfield building at Kallaxheden that was the target, not necessarily the port.”
Immanuel was close enough to hear every word. He soon realized the conversation was about the Soviet bombs that had recently fallen on locations in northern Sweden. Madame Kollontai had played the whole thing down in the press. Her press counselor had talked about a navigational error. Immanuel didn’t want to appear nosy, but he remained where he was. The two respectably dressed Germans continued to exchange thoughts about current political events in irate tones. Were they journalists or possibly officials of some kind, perhaps at the German embassy?
A much younger man was standing farther round the bar, his back to Immanuel. As he was taking off his jacket, he turned, revealing his face for a second. Immanuel gave a start and was swept by a sense of unease, for he recognized the joyless features at once. It was the boatman who had ferried him out to the island. He didn’t know why he found the young man’s presence ominous, but he did.
The discussion at Immanuel’s side moved on to other events in Norrland, and with some difficulty one of the Germans translated passages from a Swedish newspaper that he had opened on the counter. “ ‘The deafening detonation occurred at about quarter past three. The effect was devastating. Occupants of the adjoining property were woken, rushed to their windows and could confirm that Flamman’s editorial office was ablaze. But even people several kilometers away attest to the ear-shattering explosion. Several neighbors say there was a smell of petrol. The severity of the blast was evidenced by broken glass found a long distance from the building.’ ”
It was referring to the attack on the Communist newspaper Norrskensflamman.
“What a hell of a bang that must have been.”
“Yes, they got a louder wake-up call than expected.”
The event had been condemned on the radio by the Swedish prime minister and keenly discussed in the press in the last few days. According to the article, the explosive charges had been primed in the basement where the rotary press was located. The editorial office on the ground floor was empty when the explosion occurred, but the five people on the floor above died instantly. Postmortems revealed so much soot in their lungs, it was clear they must have been killed by the fire itself.
The press had focused on the potential legal consequences when the guilty were caught. It was obviously a case of arson. There was no doubt it was politically motivated, and it wasn’t surprising it had been picked up in the foreign press too.
“Amazing that the people on the top floor survived,” the man with the newspaper said, holding it up to show a photograph of the blazing offices. He folded the newspaper and continued translating. “ ‘Smoke and flames were billowing toward them, but they managed to get out even though all the fire escapes had been destroyed. Unbelievably, only one of them suffered light burns when the sheets they lowered themselves down on caught fire.’ ”
It was quiet for a moment, and both men lit cigarettes with a lighter handed to them by the obliging bartender. He glanced in Immanuel’s direction, under the assumption he might like to order. The German who had been doing most of the listening pointed to the photograph.
“At least it’s taught the Swedish Muscovites a proper lesson, as they deserve. They’re disseminating rubbish to the public, all sheer allegation and deplorable scaremongering. That’s what Wied says every time I see him. There’s been talk of us needing to crack down, but now, thankfully, our Swedish friends appear to be taking care of the problem themselves.”
“On the subject of the envoy, I wonder if it’ll be Wied who greets the guests this evening. Maybe we’ll see them all. I’ve seen Pantenburg before. There’s a rumor Walter Schellenberg from the SS will show up. Some of his girls are working tonight. Obviously he’ll lure a few of them back with him to Berlin.”
Immanuel had also read about the attack against Flamman. All those who had lost their lives were linked to the newspaper’s editorial staff, apart from the two children, of course. But their mother had worked periodically as a proofreader. Speculation over who was behind the operation had naturally gathered pace. One trail pointed to Swedish National Socialists, another to Flamman’s competitor, Norrbottens-Kiruren. One of the conservative newspaper’s editors had been taken in for questioning.
The two Germans carried on entertaining one another while they waited for someone to join them. Immanuel had moved slightly farther away, to avoid giving the impression he was interested in their conversation. He looked around the large room, feeling increasingly desperate. Why had Rickman arranged to meet in a bar like this, and full of Germans to boot?
Soft music was still coming from the gramophone, and he thought it might be sensible to order a drink after all, so that he didn’t stand out from the other guests clustered in groups in the bar. A few meters away the bartender was speaking to the blond boatman, whose gloves were on the counter in front of him and who was leaning forward to say something Immanuel couldn’t catch. On top of his shirt he was wearing a wide harness that formed a cross in the middle of his back, together with a holster only partly concealing a compact handgun. Immanuel had seen it once before, in the sunshine that morning out on the quay.
“It’s a Walther P38, the nifty new pistol that was developed for the German Wehrmacht and is about to totally replace the Luger P08 as a service weapon.”
The voice behind Immanuel was familiar. He hadn’t seen anyone approach, but there was no need to turn around; he knew with complete certainty who had arrived. What was Ascher doing here at this hour of the night, in a smoky atelier full of people he had no wish to get to know better? Somehow it seemed preordained that his rival should turn up.
“There are a lot of people here tonight. A grand visit is due,” the journalist said, with no further explanation for his presence, as he took his place at the bar between Immanuel and the two men with the newspaper. He wasn’t the type to ask if he was disturbing anyone, still less if his company was welcome. “A German scientific expedition has arranged its end-of-trip party in Stockholm. They have some political bigwigs as patrons, so it’s hardly surprising we find the occasional armed guard here this evening.” He nodded toward the young man with the pistol.
Ascher remained by Immanuel’s side, evidently waiting for his colleague to comment. Immanuel chose to say nothing. He might have felt embarrassed to be found in a place like this in the middle of the night, a place no family man had any reasonable grounds to linger. But when it came to Ascher, it didn’t matter.
Why had Immanuel always felt so suspicious of his colleague? He recalled articles about the Curia and about the political circles around the Holy See. It was no surprise that Ascher had exceptional contacts in the Vatican; he had been posted in Rome for several years and cultivated friendships. He had made the most of his time there and converted to Roman Catholicism, but to no avail: he still had a J-stamp in his German passport.
Without prompting, Ascher returned to a previous discussion concerning flight response in animals and man as a creature of escape. “Can one escape from oneself, you’re wondering now, or in other words, evade the person life has made one? Run away from what one had learned to accept? When all means of escape are closed and every door confronted is impossible to open, then nothing remains but to flee within.”
“Pardon?” Immanuel wasn’t just tired of the conversation, he was now totally confused as well. It was time to withdraw. Clearly Rickman didn’t intend to make an appearance with his obliging friend from the embassy. And Ascher was not someone he aimed to waste any more time on. He could no longer concentrate sufficiently to grasp what the man was angling for.
But Asher would not be deterred.
“The line of escape runs in two directions, one might say. But it isn’t enough to be left at the starting point. No, here it’s all about being inventive and finding another permutation, a way out into a different freedom. Do you recall the dialogue with Rosencrantz?”
Immanuel’s expression was blank. “Rosencrantz?”
“Yes, Rosencrantz.”
“I’m sorry, that doesn’t mean anything to me.”
Ascher fell silent, but only for a moment. It was as if he were getting ready to pounce, poised to drive his argument to its logical conclusion.
“That’s the course the prince of Denmark prescribed. The way of sickness. Of the simpleminded. He who cannot extricate himself and flee can find a way into a different kind of free zone. All that’s needed are some medical certificates and corroborating behavior.”
“You mean someone declares you sick?”
Ascher nodded. He gazed across the increasingly busy bar. Some women were sitting by the tall atelier window, smoking.
“It’s the ultimate way out. There’s a doctor at Beckomberga who’s prepared to help me. It won’t cost more than a month’s rent. Grand mal, two hundred crowns. Dementia praecox, same price.”
That was when Immanuel caught sight of her: the fair-haired woman from the island. She was leaning against an armchair, scantily clad like the other women. His eye followed her through the thick smoke as she left the room.
Ascher prattled on about escape routes and medical certificates. If Immanuel understood him correctly, he was intending to have himself declared sick to avoid deportation. Was that possible? Whatever the case, Immanuel wasn’t going to listen to any more of his nonsense. Nor was he going to wait for some benevolent Englishmen who had no intention of turning up.
He put on his coat. Instinctively, he felt for his inner pocket. The letter was still there. He had carried it around with him for several days, sometimes forgetting it was there, next to his chest.
He recalled Lucia’s skeptical questions about Horst and the bottle of green ink. What does he want from you? Why on earth did you get yourself into this?
It was as if she had sensed all along that the meeting with Horst would lead to some kind of trouble. Immanuel had tried to pacify her, but she hadn’t stopped weeping until it was time for bed, and then more from exhaustion than any diminishment of her fears.
All this flashed through his mind as he felt the letter in his inner pocket. It could easily have fallen out when his coat was folded over his arm.
It was high time he left. Got out of this smoky atmosphere and into the fresh air and headed for home. As he pushed aside the heavy curtain separating one of the small recesses from the very first room, the one opening onto the stairwell, he saw Karin being led away by her brother. She was no longer half naked like the other women dispersed around the room on velvet sofas and chaise longues, but wearing a dark coat. Her brother held her arm in a firm grip, as though pushing her along.
Immanuel saw them enter the elevator. He took the stairs. When he came out onto the street, they had already disappeared. He turned left onto Villagatan and soon reached Humlegården. There he took one of the footpaths and walked briskly down toward the National Library. The park sloped gently in that direction, and he strode down with ease, his tiredness overcome. The cloud had broken up and above him the sky was starry. He kept looking up to see the starlight through the mesh of leafless branches.
He could breathe freely again. A sense that in that moment something had been settled overwhelmed him.
On Birger Jarlsgatan he followed his usual route home from the office. West on Birger Jarlsgatan to Roslagsgatan, then left onto Odengatan. Every day he passed the address his friend Lagerberg had pointed out as the house Hermann Göring stayed in during his years in Stockholm. Now the city was quiet and dark, the only light cast from a streetlamp onto the pavement here and there; the facades were black, people’s homes in darkness.
He could make out the centaur with its arched bow on the hill behind the library, a single streetlamp giving luster to the metal. The half human, half horse looked as though it would take a leap out into the night at any moment. Only the occasional car passed on Sveavägen. When Immanuel arrived at the postbox on Odenplan, he took out the envelope to make sure it wasn’t unduly crumpled. Without stopping, he pushed it through the slot and gave it a little shove. It fell to the bottom of the box without a sound.