Exiles (21 page)

“I talked to someone who saw him,” Mendelsohn said.

“You did? Where?”

“I was at Flogsta, where Spiegel lives, or lived. His room there, pretty much cleared out, yes. But he didn’t take care of the details one looks to before leaving the country: the postal delivery, some food in his cupboard.”

“Of course, he planned to come back. He was just traveling.”

“And while I was there I talked to a fellow who had been placed on Spiegel’s floor, across the hallway. He has watched Spiegel’s behavior for some time now.”

“That guy Lars, the engineering student?” Spiegel asked.

“You know him? Curious little fellow,” Mendelsohn said.

Curious little rat, Spiegel thought. Who had been paying Lars to spy on the foreign students? And how did Mendelsohn know to seek him out?

“What was he, a friend of Lenny’s?” Tracy asked. “He’d never said—”

“I don’t know about a friend,” Mendelsohn said. “But he told me he saw Spiegel there this weekend, and Monday morning as well.”

“Doesn’t this guy have anything better to do than stare out his window?”

“Who said anything about a window?”

“Didn’t you say—”

“He never told me how he saw Spiegel. Maybe in the corridor. Or maybe he observed him from afar.”

“Okay,” Spiegel said, and he resolved to keep the rest of his thoughts to himself. If Mendelsohn was going to track the scent, let him do so without any further help from the quarry.

“He said something else odd,” Mendelsohn added. “He said that he thought he saw you there as well on Monday morning, Tracy.”

“Yes, of course I was there,” she said. “By that time I was worried about Lenny. We both were. I drove up to Flogsta to see if maybe anyone, any of his friends, had heard from him.”

“But I guess you’re not a very good reporter,” Mendelsohn said. “You learned less than I did. Or perhaps you talked to the wrong friends.” And he laughed, showing his yellowed teeth.

Mendelsohn thanked them for the coffee, and told them to stop by his office any time. But he had to get back, to work on some real stories, stories that had, as he put it, “legs to stand on.” The search for Lenny Spiegel, while a fascinating pastime, might turn out to be absolutely worthless, from the news point of view. Spiegel could already be on his way to Kennedy Airport, or maybe he was “shacking up” somewhere in Uppsala with some
vakra svenska flicka
he had met at a dance or a club and he would turn up in a day or two at their doorstep and say: Why all this fuss?

“Maybe,” Tracy said. “But somehow I doubt it.”

“A nice place you have here,” Mendelsohn said on his way out. “I like these old-fashioned buildings, high ceilings and all that. Old Vics, we call them. Don’t see many in Uppsala, after all, do you?”

“No. Most people like the newer buildings.”

“But you prefer an older building. Or was it all you could get, on the housing list?”

“There was plenty available,” Tracy said.

“You could apply for a bigger flat, you know. An extra bedroom. Then maybe, well . . .” Mendelsohn shrugged, spread his palms. “A little extra space. It never hurts. There may be guests, people dropping in. You could put them up more easily, you see. I get the housing list in advance. We publish the list in the
UT
, along with the government notices. But I could let you see the list, before we publish it. That way . . . well, that is, if you think you might need better housing.”

Tracy’s hands were shaking as she told Monika Nuland, later that day, about the strange encounter with Gunnar Mendelsohn. Tracy called Monika after Mendelsohn had gone, leaving behind a business card on which he had scrawled his home phone number, and Monika invited Tracy over for tea. She told her to bring Spiegel along so that they could all try to figure out the significance of the recent news reports. They would try to make sense out of Mendelsohn’s visit, as well.

Tracy and Spiegel agreed that there was something underhanded about Mendelsohn. Tracy argued that if he had been driving all around the city, dropping in at odd hours on strangers, without calling ahead, he was in search of more than a news story. She thought he had been sent to track down Spiegel, that he was some kind of police agent, either from the Swedish government or in the pay of the army’s criminal-intelligence division.

“Why? What makes you think that?” Monika asked.

“The things he said about me,” Spiegel said. “He knew too much.”

“He said he had heard about his father,” Tracy said.

“What about his father?” Monika asked.

“We try to keep this quiet because it would just make it impossible for him to operate within the movement,” Tracy said. She explained about Spiegel’s father and his work for the government.

“Are you in touch with him?” Monika asked. “Does he know you are in Sweden?”

“No, we hardly speak. He heard the news when I got into trouble last year, in the States. He offered to bail me out, pull some strings in the judicial branch. But I got out on my own—”

“—time off for good behavior,” Tracy said.

“And since then I just drop him a card now and then. I wrote some out before I left the States. A friend back there mails them, once a month. He thinks I’m still at the university, I guess.”

“Then it’s no problem,” Monika said.

“But how did Mendelsohn know about him?” Spiegel said. “I don’t believe that he just wandered up to Flogsta and by chance found someone who knew me, who had seen me there on Monday. I think he has been in touch with someone up there who has been watching me the whole time, ever since I came to Uppsala.”

“That engineer on your floor? Lars what’s-his-name?”

“Apparently, but probably there’s someone who knew me better. Someone who was able to lead him to you, Tracy.”

“Oh, it’s not so surprising he came to call on Tracy,” Monika said. “Everyone in Uppsala who knows anything about the political scene knows Tracy. You’re a celebrity,” she said, raising her teacup and clinking a toast.

“
Skål
,” Tracy said.

The teacups were filled with straight vodka. As Spiegel could see from looking around Monika’s place, a small cottage on the grounds of the botanical gardens, Monika was a woman of contradictions, but she’d drawn the contradictory elements of her interests and her personality into a pleasant and comforting harmony. Through her mullioned windows Spiegel gazed on neat rows of tufted thistles and pale flowers, their soft petals undulating in the gentle spring breeze. Inside, however, the timbered walls of the cottage were papered with screeds against injustice and oppression, huge posters demanding that the masses take arms against the imperialist dogs and the capitalist swine. The message, trumpeted from the doorposts and the walls, could not rouse Spiegel from the drowsy comfort he felt in Monika’s presence. He should probably be holding high a banner and marching in the streets, but he would much rather sink down among the soft cushions of Monika’s overstuffed chairs and watch the sun set as he drank her vodka chased by herbal tea.

From the moment he had seen her in the TV studio, Spiegel had been curious about Monika, attracted both by her serene beauty and her ardent political convictions. He was taken, from the first, by her soft and lovely features, her heart-shaped face and her mouth like a teardrop, her breathy and almost girlish voice, her English laced with the fetching hint of a British accent. When she spoke, she stated her views with clarity and confidence; she had stood unafraid before the hectoring of the opportunistic politician and the cynical goading of the spineless moderator. He was sorry, at the time, that he had to deceive her, to make her believe that he was Aaronson. He thought he would like to meet her and to set things right, although he feared that she had hardly noticed him, that in her mind he was just a faded image, obscured by the brighter presences all around him. Monika would never be able to make him out among the long, dark shadows cast by Aaronson and Tracy.

On the way over to Monika’s cottage earlier that afternoon, Spiegel had learned from Tracy some of the details of Monika’s life. She had grown up in a small village in the far north, and directly after high school had moved to the city, to Stockholm, to work in a counseling center for refugees. Most of her time had been spent trying to get housing vouchers for Turkish construction workers and talking to homesick teenage Finnish maids who wanted to break their contracts and take the ferry home to Helsinki. But she did meet a few of the first wave of American deserters, and she listened to their tales of the horror and the stupidity of the war. Moved by a heartfelt sympathy for the displaced Americans and by a messianic outrage about the war itself, Monika set up a social-service team that would be devoted to the needs of the small American community in Stockholm. They helped many of the deserters to find their first jobs and apartments. After two years of working in Stockholm, Monika enrolled in the university in Uppsala to take a joint course of study in counseling and international politics and to establish a new branch of the student antiwar society, the SSS. But Spiegel suspected that there must have been more to her decision to leave Stockholm. Perhaps her involvement with the Americans had gone beyond the level of professional services. Perhaps she had been wounded in love and she had come north to take refuge from the field of battle, an exile in her own right.

Monika refilled the cups and lit a set of tapered white beeswax candles that warmed the room with a liquescent, shimmering light. “I don’t think he’s a spy,” she said. Spiegel, lost in ruminations, had almost forgot that they had come to Monika’s to get the lowdown on Mendelsohn. “He is a real editor. His newspaper is quite good, actually.”

“Maybe he’s a spy on the side,” Tracy said. “Sort of like a hobby.”

“Hmm. I don’t think so. He’s not even Swedish, you know.”

“No? What is he?”

“A Dane. That’s why everyone in Sweden reads his paper so carefully. He’s an outsider. He brings a fresh point of view.”

“Which is what?” Spiegel asked.

“Not so much right or left, but inside, under the surface. He seems to hear about things before anybody else, and when he prints a story, even if it seems outrageous, everybody knows that there must be truth in it. He has excellent . . . what’s your word for it?”

“Contacts? Sources?”

“Yes. As you have learned.”

“I’m not sure I should stay in touch with him,” Spiegel said.

“Oh, don’t worry about that. He’ll stay in touch with you,”

Monika said.

“Then maybe I should just stay out of his way,” Spiegel said. “I don’t think it’s such a good idea right now for me to be inter- viewed by the press. The TV show was one thing, but I don’t think I could pretend to be Aaronson through a whole interview. Eventually, I’d slip up, and Mendelsohn would know for sure who I am and that Aaronson’s in Europe.”

“So if he calls back, I’ll just tell him we’re lying low,” Tracy said. “No press. I’ll keep him away from you.”

“You could move in here,” Monika said, “until you hear from Aaronson again. Until he returns.”

“No,” Tracy said abruptly. “I want him to stay with me. People may be watching my flat. We have to do whatever we can to make it look like Aaronson is still in Uppsala.”

“Do you know where he has gone? If he’s okay?”

“I hope he’s already made it into Sweden. If not, he’ll have trouble at the border with Lenny’s passport.”

“It’s a big country. It’s not exactly surrounded by an iron curtain,” Monika said.

“More like a Marimekko curtain.”

“He’ll find a way back,” Monika said. “Or he will get word to you.”

Monika took a long sip of her tea. Spiegel let his gaze wander from Monika to Tracy and back. Somehow, by her suggestion that Spiegel could move in with her, Monika had raised the temperature of the room. More was at stake than Aaronson’s safety, Spiegel realized. For reasons of her own, Tracy wanted him near her. He was flattered and moved by her sudden and unexpectedly firm refusal. But he was stirred, as well, by Monika’s solicitude. He smiled at her, although she didn’t notice.

Monika put down her teacup. “My group in Stockholm has contacts with the student movement all through Europe,” she said. “Perhaps we could get him a message, send him some new documents to help bring him back home. If he is in danger, we could arrange for his security. We have houses, places of hiding, all through Europe. We have used them to shelter others who were running from danger or waiting for new papers.”

“Yes, he may need protection,” Tracy said. “There’s no telling what kind of trouble could be chasing him.”

“What do you mean?” Spiegel asked.

“Depending on what Aaronson has done and where he’s been, the American government may want to bring criminal charges against him. They may try to convince the Swedish authorities that he’s not an ordinary war resister and that his residence permit should be pulled.”

“You mean,” Spiegel said, “even if he gets back safely to Sweden, he could be held, and deported for trial.”

Tracy nodded. She turned to Monika. “If he’s in trouble, could your group hide Aaronson for a while?”

“For as long as you need.”

“That’s good,” Tracy said. “We’ll talk about that. But first we have to try to find him.”

“And then we have to find a way,” Monika said, turning to Spiegel, “to make you disappear.”

“I’m good at that,” Spiegel said. In truth, he felt a strange excitement at the prospect of becoming someone else, a deep sexual shudder that reminded him of the sensation he would sometimes experience as a child, when he thought about diving into the water with his clothes on, as if what he was about to engage in was a both a playful indiscretion and a more serious violation of taboo.

“You don’t have to be good at disappearing. All you have to do is be Aaronson,” Tracy said. “And we have to make it seem as if Lenny Spiegel has vanished. We don’t want people trying to find him in Sweden.”

“You’re thinking about Mendelsohn.”

“Yes. Right now, he believes that Lenny’s passport was stolen. Eventually, he will ask the next question. Where has Spiegel gone?”

“Do you have a plan?” Spiegel asked.