Mattias Berg - The Carrier

At 23.51—after the five longest minutes of my life—she came back into the red glow with a quiet little smile.

“I sank them, Erasmus. We’re not going to have any more use for our field cell phones, neither yours nor mine. Quite the opposite. The telephones are their only live link to us, spreading fairy dust throughout the universe, even though we’ve taken the batteries out. So they had to vanish into the chasm of hell. Take this one instead.”

Ingrid put something plastic in my right hand, folded my fingers round it, as if it were a surprise. But of course I knew in an instant what it was. Had so often weighed it in my hand. I had felt how heavy yet light it was, the seeming impossibility of our possible flight—until the old-fashioned cell phone had one day disappeared from the bushes by the hut. After the last encrypted message from Alpha, which read “CREATE MORE TIME. PLAY SICK!”

“I bought them in a small store off the beaten track many years ago, while this type was still available. They’re not connected to the net and there’s no built-in tracking system. I got them when people could still rely on technology and each other. Three for the price of two, the exact number we need.”

Ingrid looked at her watch—and I did the same. It was 23.55. She put her combat pack down and took out four crunch crackers and a bottle of water. With a certain formality she gave me two of the crackers even though I still had rations of my own and, after taking a few big mouthfuls herself, handed me the bottle.

“From now on everything that’s mine is yours, Erasmus. Food and water. The flight and the plan. We share the divine solitude of the savior.”

At exactly midnight we were helped through the hatch, Ingrid first, by a man’s powerful hand. From my worm’s-eye view, lying on the white clinker floor looking up into the glare of the ceiling spotlight, I could barely distinguish his outline. He looked to be six and a half feet tall. Almost eight inches more than Ingrid, and as upright, slim, showing the signs of hard training. Military through and through.

Their relationship was evident at once. I observed the ease of brothers-in-arms, and from the intensity of their first embrace, it was clear that they shared more.

Although I could not pick up enough of what they were saying—it was now more than ten years since Ingrid had taught me the basics of Swedish—the scene was almost too clear: the reunion left neither of them unmoved. In spite of all their years of practice, they could not hide the weight of the moment. Nor their efforts to conceal it.

Perhaps it was because I was lying there, silently observing them. Or maybe, more likely, because one other person was standing a few feet away in the tiled room. A woman who, to judge from their gentle choreography, was likely his wife. How tenderly he brought her forward—so she too could give Ingrid a long, loving hug.

As my eyes adjusted to the blinding white light of the room, the details became clearer. At first I assumed this was yet another sort of laboratory from the old days, but then I saw that it was a laundry room. The tall man pushed the dryer back over the opening through which we had come, without obvious effort and using only one hand, while picking up Ingrid’s backpack in the other.

I tried to memorize the face. His eyes were at least as ice blue as Ingrid’s, hair cut to less than an inch, and he was going gray at the temples. A fine-looking if anonymous Scandinavian that could have played the hero in a B-movie. The woman was shorter, well below average height. She looked almost small beside her husband and Ingrid. Her hair had a tinge of gray and had been put up in a tight chignon.

The woman stumbled over me in the shadows, but caught herself. Only then did they seem to realize I was there on the floor. Ingrid made a sweeping gesture in my direction and the tall man reached down to me. It was a degrading position to be put in, as if to disarm me.

“So this is Erasmus,” he said in perfect English, giving my hand a hard and determined shake. “Sixten Lundberg. Good to meet you at last. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Erasmus Levine, sir,” I said, as distinctly as I could given my flabby new lips.

“And this is my wonderful wife,” he said, executing an elegant side-step in the narrow laundry room—like a dancer—to allow her to shake my hand.

“Aina Lundberg. It’s a miracle that you’ve managed to make it here!”

Her thick accent made me think again of Ingrid Bergman, the actress. Images from the past telescoped forward to the present. When Sixten had pulled me to my feet, again with one hand, treating my loose-limbed body like a child’s, his look flicked from my swollen face to the briefcase lying on the floor next to me.

“So, the man with the briefcase… Imagine, that such a thing still exists.”

As he led us out of the laundry room, Aina behind us, his words rang in my ears, “ that such a thing still exists .”

As we went up the white-glazed pine half-flight of stairs into the hallway, I tried to get some sort of grip on the situation—although my strength was ebbing after the surgery and then the journey here to Sixten and Aina, when I should have had a few days at least to recover. I looked around for surveillance equipment, places where people could break in or attack from the outside, possible escape routes.

I saw no trace of concealed microphones, cameras, hidden alarms. In fact no distinguishing features at all: the whole of the newly built house seemed to have been standardized to the point of extinguishing all character.

Only someone with something to hide lives as impersonally as this.

The one break in all of the white was a pale-blue rag mat, and a natural-pine key-cupboard with a small red heart painted on the front. When we got to the kitchen—where the cupboard doors and shelves were also white—Sixten swung around and said we should go ahead. He would bring drinks right away.

The living room was colorful, almost strident, in comparison. Ingrid took a seat on the mustard-yellow sofa. I more or less fell into the matching armchair opposite and looked around to get a sense of who these people might be. Ingrid met my eyes with a soft smile.

But the room betrayed nothing special. The curtains and the deep-pile rug were in exactly the same shade of yellow as the sofa and armchair. Three marine watercolors hung on the walls in white plastic frames: sea and sun in a mildly naïve style. An illuminated display case contained rows of the best glasses, apart from those which had been set out on the glass sofa table—large ones for beer, small for spirits. I swallowed heavily. The smell of honey from the scented candles on the serving trolley made it hard to breathe.

I looked at my watch. It was perhaps significant that the curtains had been drawn, shutting out life outside on a Monday around midnight. And that they were lined with heavy black cloth on the inside. I got to my feet, legs unsteady, and went to touch the fabric.

“Like our blackout curtains, Erasmus?”

I could not hide my surprise, or rather consternation, at how close Sixten had come to me without my noticing. He was barely two feet behind me, carrying three Bloody Marys on a tin tray. He must have had the same training as Ingrid. They had no doubt made a fantastic couple—for those who were on their side.

“This weight probably vanished from our military stock decades ago: it was designed for use during war and in times of peace. I picked up a few bolts when I had the chance, thought that they might come in handy. And when Ingrid contacted me after all these years, they found a natural home here. From a distance, if by chance anyone should have the idea of spying on us, it looks as if we’ve already turned out the lights and gone to bed. Gives the full illusion, I’d say.”