Mattias Berg - The Carrier

A shock, like a shivering fit, ran through me. Partly because the temperature had dropped to four below and I was dressed for movement. Partly because Sixten’s intimate old man’s voice got right to me.

“I hadn’t been entirely honest with Aina either, saying only that I was involved in highly classified research out here. And as soon as the Swedish program was axed I was transferred to the disarmament section—which at first felt peculiar. But I was by no means alone. The fact is that Sweden’s delegations at the international conferences included many other unofficial advisors, who had earlier been active in our own nuclear weapons efforts. I could even say that we became a power in disarmament because we never became one in rearmament. Because of our history at the time, circumstances, you know how it is, Erasmus. The power of destiny.”

Sixten fell silent, seemed to hesitate. His outline had started to become visible through the darkness.

“So when Aina brought me along to some out-and-out activists’ meetings, in the early ’70s, I had not got around to telling her what I had been up to in the old days. And then after that the timing somehow never seemed right. A pathetic excuse, admittedly.”

When a moped puttered along somewhere nearby, Sixten fell silent again. Even though it was far away, he did not go on with what he was saying until the rider had stopped and had ample time to get indoors.

“So it was impossible for me to agree with what she wanted. We had a spacious house with a proper yard, and we weren’t in any need. Even though Aina pointed out the rather nice-looking small lawns which had been drawn in the brochure at the back of the houses here, as well as the wooded area close by—she even went so far as to find out that there were places nearby with relatively rare species of birds for me to study—I should say that I never got into serious negotiations over it. And that’s how the situation remained for a quite a long time. A sort of ceasefire, so as not to let the battle over our future home crush our wonderful marriage, just when we had both retired. Until Ingrid called, forty years to the day after she and I had separated.”

I recognized the sound now. The little swish when one sort of plastic brushes against another. I took the bottle from Sixten’s hand and emptied it in one go. I suddenly felt overwhelmingly thirsty. His story seemed to consume as much energy as a proper long run.

“Ingrid said that she had discovered my wife’s name in the record of some minor action. That your people had registered her presence among all the others, in what must clearly have been an extremely systematic mapping of your ideological opponents, all the way down to and including little Aina Lundberg in neutral little Sweden. That Ingrid had seen the first name and the family name and simply put two and two together. Just as she herself was beginning to plan your flight in earnest, and needed a safe haven to start out from. A whole succession of circumstances, I should say. The rather strange ironies of history.”

Sixten took a swig from the other bottle.

“And after that the situation was the direct opposite. In other words impossible for me not to do what Aina wanted, to move out here to Ursvik. She would otherwise have interpreted my reservations as if I wanted to avoid memories of Ingrid—when she got in touch I had felt compelled, despite everything, to tell Aina—and of course this would be the most perfect hiding place on the globe. In my humble opinion the only underground tunnel system in the world which is so extensive and at the same time so unknown. Or what do you say, Erasmus? You who are much more up-to-date than me?”

I did not answer, glanced at my watch. Not long to go till midnight.

“It took about a year before we moved here. For that I will always be grateful to Ingrid: that she brought me and Aina together again in this way. To the end of time.”

The hum from the motorway had as good as dried out. Silence crept in, you could feel it through your clothes.

“So how was it for you, Erasmus? Was it the double life, all the lies to your wife and kids, which eventually reached their natural limit? Or the cause itself? I know it’s often a combination of different factors—but still, could you pick out any one thing that finally got you to take this rather grandiose decision?”

I had been expecting the question. Knew that even genuine confidences are barter goods of sorts: you have to give in order to get. For a moment I was quite sure that I was about to say something decisive and irrevocable. About the long-faded sessions with Ingrid on my dissertation, about how the decision had grown imperceptibly, seemingly beyond my control.

Then the icy cold returned, the shivering through my whole body. He may have thought that I was only shrugging.

“It was no doubt as you say, Sixten: a combination of factors, hard to distinguish one from another. But I’m starting to get a bit cold. Can we move a little, do you think?”

I tightened the straps on the hybrid, looking for that weightlessness, and frequently had to adjust the balance as Sixten increased our pace. First to less than ten minutes per mile, then steadily nearer to eight. Maybe to test me, two runners competing with each other, to see what I was capable of, even in my current condition. Or perhaps to warm me up again.

But my body did not respond anywhere near as well as I would have liked. Even when the pressure was on, regulations prescribed at least fourteen days of rehabilitation after surgery or physical trauma, although in practice that was seldom possible.

The sentry box on the far side of the wooded area made me start, instinctively, feeling exposed. I glanced at Sixten. The area within the gates was bathed in a sharp yellow light.

“You can relax, Erasmus. The box has been unmanned for decades. The construction company puts up the spotlights, to scare away the kids who play here in the evenings—and the night watchman doesn’t start his rounds for another hour.”

I checked my watch again: just past midnight. Then we squatted to get under the bars and stopped in front of two low barrack buildings with peeling gray paint.

“So here it is: the scene of the crime. The facilities for all of those who worked on the nuclear weapons program at the National Defense Research Institute, the F.O.A., a maximum of two thousand people in the mid ’60s. On your left you have the Women’s Building and on your right the significantly bigger Men’s Building. But most of us with high security clearance were stationed deep underground.”

We walked a long curve through the area, with Sixten a step or two in front. Outside the half-collapsed fence behind the barracks there was a smaller section of forest. On the top of the slope above it one could make out a building covered in plastic sheeting. He nodded up at it.

“The Office. They’re going to turn the whole site into an independent school. You’ve come in the nick of time to see anything at all.”

Sixten ran ahead, ducked through a hole in the fence. After that the forest path became extremely steep, in fact almost too much for me to handle, more climbing than running. It cannot have been anyone’s plan that people come this way.

Once we had got up onto the illuminated asphalt-covered space, which would probably be the schoolyard when the conversion was finished, Sixten led us into the gloom beyond the reach of the spotlights. Up to the electricity box next to some flat cables by the darkened building’s emergency exit. After he had keyed in the code on the concealed set of buttons, again eight beeps, the double doors opened and the floor inside was bathed in light.

“Excuse the mess, Erasmus. They had to check the levels of radioactivity in here: how much was literally in the walls.”