Mattias Berg - The Carrier

“Nice.”

Since I knew absolutely nothing about either the man or his wife—even whether they were indeed called Sixten and Aina—I had to keep him at a distance. But it was not easy. With each passing minute he put me more at my ease, with his natural manner, his old-fashioned, almost boyish charm. Before he placed the glasses down on the table in front of us, he twirled the tray on his fingertips, as if it were a basketball, spilling not a drop.

“Aina will be ready in just a moment. But try her patented Bloody Mary in the meantime, it’s got a kick in it, I can tell you. My wife doesn’t drink a drop herself—she has her principles, that woman—but she doses up both the tabasco and the alcohol like there’s no tomorrow. I don’t think you’ll find a better painkiller this side of the medicine chest.”

Ingrid nodded, closed her eyes and raised her glass. Muttered a “ skål ”. I followed her lead. In my fragile state, the alcohol went straight to my head and I lost focus rather than regained it. Yet a sense of gentle well-being settled across what had been, only moments ago, my very sore face. Almost from a distance I heard Sixten’s voice as he raised his own glass—“There’s only me left then, so, skål to you all!”—and he too knocked it back.

When Sixten led us out to the kitchen, to the table which Aina had laid for us, she said “only Swedish specialties” to me in her endearing accent. With the first course, toast with fresh shrimp, she filled our glasses with aquavit and beer. Meatballs and mashed potato came next. The meal closed with “Ambrosia cake”, its white icing bright against the brandy and coffee she served with it.

I managed to stay sober, thanks to Sixten on my right. He showed himself to be an excellent conversationalist. Managed to keep my feet on the ground, always finding new things to engage me with—even in this situation, after our escape, with the briefcase settled between my legs under the kitchen table. Nothing which could in any way put our position at risk. Just enough easy and entertaining differences between Swedish and American culture, food here and there, the particularly difficult “sje-“ and “tje-“ sounds in the Swedish language. In other words: everything except what we should have been talking about.

The alcohol was a diversion, an evasion, flight as maneuver. Something which made things easier and harder in one and the same mouthful.

Because what I was witnessing was a high-drama reunion, celebrated with liquor and conversation. Not that Sixteen and Ingrid were impolite or had eyes only for each other. Strictly speaking it was Aina and Ingrid who were more absorbed in one another. They sat there holding hands, exchanged long, wandering sentences in Swedish which I had no possibility of deciphering because Sixten was keeping me fully occupied.

Nevertheless Ingrid and Sixten kept watch over each other with small stolen glances. Things that would never normally be noticed—except by someone whose life-long job has been to observe.

If I had kept drinking the alcohol, instead of pouring most of it into a bushy weeping fig next to where I was sitting, I’m sure I could have asked them myself, let all inhibition go. Even in Aina’s presence, I could have wondered about Ingrid and Sixten’s common history. What exactly they had together.

But I did not ask it. Not even when Aina stayed in the kitchen to take care of the dishes, she said, and the rest of us went back to the living room, shut the door and sat down next to each other on the mustard-yellow sofa; Sixten still with a brandy balloon in his hand. I in the armchair opposite.

While Ingrid took her “computer”—the same sort of portable command terminal that I had only seen Edelweiss use before—out of its small case and started it up, Sixten began his questioning. It became increasingly tough, like some sort of lie detector test without the detector.

“Tell me, Erasmus… you had a family, right? And left them, just like that. Because of the cause ?”

His gaze was like veiled hypnosis: gentle and yet razor-sharp. I tried to catch Ingrid’s attention—she hardly looked up from the screen before answering my implied question.

“He’s snow white, Erasmus. Had the highest security clearance of us all. Including me. Only the Lord himself was more blessed.”

Ingrid continued to stare into the screen. I sensed the static in her gaze, she was on edge, like a hand grenade with the pin pulled, capable of saying anything.

I sat and said very little, hesitant. Then I went for it. Since I now had nothing else to cling to, nothing whatsoever in the entire universe—and since this man invited trust. It felt like a confession. I spoke as slowly as I could without becoming incomprehensible.

“Yes, a wife and kids. Two girls and a boy between seven and eleven. My wife gave them slightly unusual names: Unity, the boy Duality, Trinity.”

“And you’ve been deceiving that woman for all these years? Kept her in the dark as to what you were doing, even that you were in the military, living a double life? Used your research post at university—moral philosophy, wasn’t it—as your cover?”

“Yes, sir. Fully in line with regulations.”

“Of course, of course… But still, what a thing to have to deal with.”

Sixten looked at me again, I felt the heat of his proximity on my face. I was not sure if he meant me or Amba—but did not want to ask. In the silence, all you could hear was Ingrid clicking away at her keyboard. After what must have been a minute, Sixten poured brandy into Ingrid’s balloon and then into his own. Slowly he took a sip.

“But then you left all that behind? Wife, children, the Team, your job as Carrier of the briefcase? In the middle of this official visit to Sweden?”

“That is correct.”

“And what is your plan now?”

That was as far as I could go. Partly because I did not know how far our trust in Sixten should stretch in the present context. Partly because I had no idea myself.

Apart from the summons to meet Alpha in a fallout shelter 253.3 feet down in the bed-rock in the course of our trip to Stockholm, I had not received one single concrete detail. The rest had been an unresolved puzzle. Circumstantial evidence, some leads, more or less educated guesses.

In the end I had placed my life in Alpha’s hands. Maybe everybody’s lives, the whole of mankind’s. We two against the world.

I began to formulate an answer for Sixten. Something which would be vague enough, and not betray the fact that I knew no more than he did himself. There was a taste of blood in my mouth. Without thinking I raised my glass to my wounded lips, only to discover it was empty. Sixten poured a generous measure of brandy into his balloon and pushed it over to my side of the table. I drained it in one, felt the warmth spread through my chest, and was ready to break the silence.

If Ingrid had not got in ahead of me.

“He knows as little as you do, Sixten. I hadn’t wanted to lead any of you into temptation. Until now.”

She made a small gesture to me—and I squeezed next to her on the sofa. There was just enough room there for the three of us. She smelled of skin, and something else, maybe disinfectant following the operation. We all stared into the screen.

“This is our most satanic work of art. The only thing created by man which is a constant threat to all of his other creations. No-one can imagine its possible uses, the full consequences. Not the military. Not the politicians, the general public, not the individual. Not even me.”

Ingrid squinted at Sixten on her left, then at me, and then she looked straight ahead.

“And that is the only reason this work of art still exists. You can’t fathom its proportions: neither calculate its effects in any understandable way, nor present it to the public—without seeming alarmist or unseemly. That nobody really knows anything about the real effects of the present-day nuclear weapons system. Whether mankind could survive a world war using those means. Now that not only we, but the enemy too, have access to them.”