Holger’s thoughts tripped over each other, attempting to assess the situation. But to no avail. The threats they faced, the opportunities of escape, Kaare, Louise, everything swirling around in his head. Each time he nailed one issue down, the rest chaotically flew around and focus once more slipped away. Fear slowly got the upper hand in the deafening silence, and he had to mobilise all his reserves to pull himself from the hole of hopelessness and self-pity that he was digging. Slowly, he regained control of his mind. He was unaware of how much time had passed, but the shivering had stopped, and a hallucinatory warmth beamed through his body. Tatjana sat with her legs drawn up under her chin, still shaking uncontrollably. Holger shuffled up close to her. Were it not for his hands being tied behind his back, he would have put his arms around her; now, he could only lean into her.
‘Shh, shh… we’re going to be all right…,’ he whispered, trying to make it sound convincing.
He began slowly rocking her back and forth with his shoulder, precisely as when Louise was younger, and he had calmed her after a nightmare. He felt an overpowering desire to kiss her but restrained himself and instead let his eyes wander around the room. Suddenly his heart skipped a beat. We’re not alone. He found it difficult to focus in the dim light, but gradually the outline of a 373slumped figure emerged in the corner. It felt like minutes for his brain to decode the signals his eyes sent through his optic nerves. Is it Kaare? The gaunt form moved slowly, almost as if it could sense Holger’s inquisitive gaze. Holger stood and walked towards the corner. The person was severely mauled and chained to a pipe, and they made eye contact the next instant. The battered person’s eyes slowly lit up, like a dead machine suddenly receiving a power surge. As the man attempted to move forward, Holger could hear his voice struggling.
‘My name is Kaare Strand,’ he said hoarsely in English, and his voice nearly cracked.
Holger closed the gap to him swiftly.
‘Kaare, we’re here to bring you home. I’m Jaeger number eighty-six. My name is Holger Berg, and she’s Tatjana. The circumstances could be better, but together we’ll make it home,’ he said slowly in Danish and kept eye contact to ensure that Kaare understood the message.
Holger tried to give Kaare an encouraging bump with his shoulder, but it ended up in an awkward move.
‘It’ll be all right. It’ll be all right,’ Holger chanted calmly.
Holger felt strangely upbeat. Neither spoke, and Holger sat close to Kaare, leaning his head against the wall. He had found Kaare, although all his expectations of a heroic rescue had not come to pass. But they were both alive, and he had to find a way out. Holger closed his eyes and felt the adrenaline sapping from his body. His mind began to wander again. As an old film where the images flicker and bounce on the screen. He saw snippets from his marriage and from Louise’s christening. While the images flickered past his mind’s eye, he suddenly realised that he had never 374really loved Susanne. It was as if he’d switched the lights on in the imaginary theatre, and everyone else present turned and glared at him in astonishment. Why haven’t I grasped that? he thought and felt everybody looked at him accusingly. Yes, why did it take me so long? The film flickered on from Louise’s christening to her fourth birthday, the last they had spent as a family before he and Susanne had divorced. It was not until he became a father that he realised what it meant to love and, consequently, the fear of losing it. Holger had registered the first sign shortly after Louise’s birth: he started measuring everything to her age. His assessment of his career was no longer a correlation between his age and his success; or the age at which he would retire. Everything was now benchmarked against her age. Like how old she would be when he got his right of audience before the Supreme Court. It was as if his entire existence in a single instant was secondary to Louise’s life. As she moved on from crawling to walking and he could begin to relate to her more, he looked for himself in his daughter. Recognised words and sentences that he used. Discovered that she had his eyes and nose and that her mind was like his in many ways. It had made him feel proud. She is my little girl and will always be, even if we don’t live together anymore. The film began to flicker again, its images becoming blurred beyond recognition. He became drowsy and wished only to let his weariness overpower him. Holger closed his eyes shut harder and let himself sink into the liberating black void of sleep. Reality was kept at bay for a while. The burden of Kaare and Tatjana, depending on him, was lifted from his shoulders. They expected he would do his utmost to get them out of there.
Louise expects nothing less of me.375