Mattias Berg - The Carrier

I shiver—maybe because of the memories, the situation I find myself in, this monumental solitude—but hardly from the cold. The atmosphere down here is as mild as I had expected. Edelweiss told us about the mysterious hot springs found under the continental ice, like discoveries of gold, when work started on producing this ambiguous facility at the end of the ’50s. That they were the reason why the temperature could be markedly higher in this hidden lower level than in the officially open higher one.

This too is where I shall now be going, lowering myself into eternity in the largest of those hot springs. Having hidden my chronicle so that any pursuers will never find it—but you will, when everything is revealed by the parchment. And because the whole installation will surely rise to the surface long before my chronicle is irreparably damaged.

This is the only way for you to get to know my story. Start to imagine all these unimaginable things. Realize that NUCLEUS, the Inner Circle and Project Iceworm, the nuclear weapons themselves, did once exist. Were an actual part of our reality.

Because you must understand.

And maybe you finally will.

I brace myself, tense my body, ready myself for the last short stage of all. Get up from the throne of ice, leave the command console, walk through the next, smaller hall, the last one. And there it is: a simple little cross on the door the only sign.

The chapel down here is modeled on the one up there, a part of the whole civilian community built as a trompe l’oeil . Scenery and mock-ups to hide the truth, one level down.

I open the door, which only offers a slight resistance after all these years. The feeling of reverence is almost paralyzing. I move at a snail’s pace, as if sleep-walking. In here, too, everything is made of ice. On Edelweiss’ photographs, the crucifix was reminiscent of the one in Jukkasjärvi.

Then he had also showed us pictures from after the abandonment of the installations. The crucifix had for some reason been the only thing, apart from the nuclear reactor, to have been removed. His theory was that it could well have been a group of curious urban explorers who visited and took this most significant souvenir with them.

I search the wall with the light from my lamp, soon find traces of the upper hole, just visible. Try with a screwdriver from the engine room on the icebreaker. At first I make no progress—but after long enough, with sufficient persistence, the tip finally penetrates the surface. Then I move the screwdriver around to enlarge the gap. The ice which surrounds it is significantly more solid, like cement, almost diamond hard.

The result is quite simply the perfect hiding place. When I push in the rolls of parchment, as I soon will, and then cover the hollow with ice which has fallen while I was digging away, nobody will be able to find it. Not before the walls melt, and the ceiling, this entire place is laid bare by the effects of climate change.

But before I complete my account for you in what I hope will still be some sort of posterity, I sink or perhaps fall on my knees here in the chapel. Clasp my hands and for the first time in many years say a prayer. For our nuclear weapons future. For you, for us, for myself. Whoever I might be.

Then I pick up the pen again, scratch the last lines into the parchment. Close my eyes, listen to the silence, feel the mild air of the eternal ice against my eyelids.

In just a few minutes it will definitely be over: when I have walked the four hundred feet or so from here to the hot spring and disappeared for ever.

After that, it will all be up to you.

The woman stared at him, with the most intense gray eyes he had ever seen.

“Do you remember who Tomoya Kawakita was?”

The doctor shook his head, turned his back to the woman and ripped the sealed package of the syringe open, checked the fluid level, started the ritual.

He glanced through the glass pane at the broad outline of the single figure on the other side, from the light to the dark. The intention was obviously that he should not see who was standing out there.

The silence became oppressive.

“A baseball player, ma’am?” he finally said.

“Baseball player?”

“Yes, ma’am. You’d be surprised how many like to talk baseball in this situation.”

It was casual chat, gallows small talk: the only strategy he found bearable. Some said that it helped the subject to cope.

“I see…” the woman said. “No, he was a Japanese American, the last one convicted by us of treason, 1948, just over half a century ago. Mistreated our prisoners in the camps during World War II.”

Her voice was hypnotic, as in a lecture hall, or maybe a therapist’s. The doctor had to master himself to continue his preparations. Turned without a word to the woman, rolled up the left sleeve of her tunic as she continued:

“But he was reprieved in 1953, by Eisenhower.”

Still silent he tapped the point on her arm, a few times more than necessary. The vein was clear to see under the skin.

“Do you have any clue what I’ve done?”

The doctor had been here before.

“Of course you’re totally innocent, ma’am, acted in good faith or self-defense. I expect you tried to save the world.”

He gave her a smile. Of respect and of humility for his task.

“Something like that,” the woman said.

She met his gaze, smiled back. The doctor felt the heat spreading through his body, as if he himself were being infused.

Then he looked away and raised the syringe.

MATTIAS BERG is a cultural journalist based in Stockholm. After working at major newspapers such as Dagens Nyheter and Expressen , he joined Swedish Radio in 2002, where he was the head of the culture department for a decade. He has written two works of non-fiction on technology and culture; one about the early Japanese information society, and one about the cloned sheep Dolly and biotechnology’s dreams of creating artificial life. The Carrier is his first novel.

GEORGE GOULDING was born in Stockholm, educated in England, and spent his legal career working for a London-based law firm. He is now a translator of Swedish literature into English, including David Lagercrantz’s continuations of the Millennium trilogy by Stieg Larsson.

First published in the Swedish language as Dödens triumf by Natur & Kultur, Stockholm, in 2016

First published in Great Britain in 2019 by MacLehose Press an imprint of Quercus Publishing Ltd

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Copyright © 2016 by Mattias Berg

English translation copyright © 2019 by George Goulding Published by agreement with Norstedts Agency

The moral right of Mattias Berg to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

George Goulding asserts his moral right to be identified as the translator of the work.

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

EBOOK ISBN 978 0 85705 788 4

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.