Юхан Теорин - The Voices Beyond

Lisa bent over the mixer desk; she was making sure Summertime behaved herself. There would be no more little excursions on to the dance floor, and she was keeping her fingers to herself. Staying on the right side of the law was the sensible thing to do, but the excitement had gone.

Half an hour after midnight, Kent Kloss himself arrived, which was unusual, and sat down at the bar. He ordered something from the bartender, slapped a few regular customers on the back and chatted with a couple of the guards who came over to him. Lisa noticed that he was drinking only mineral water; he carried on chatting and laughing, but he didn’t even glance over at the DJ booth. Not once.

Lisa started to feel nervous. Lady Summertime was fumbling with the controls, and the transitions between tracks were anything but smooth.

Eventually, the agony was over.

‘Thank you and goodnight,’ she said after the last song, ‘The End’ by The Doors.

And that was that. No one applauded; the remaining guests finished off their drinks and wandered out into the night. A thick cloud of weariness hovered just below the ceiling.

It’s the heat, Lisa thought, but she knew that wasn’t true. There’s no atmosphere in a half-empty club. She gathered up her records, finishing just as the last guests left the room. But before she could follow them, Kent Kloss came over.

‘Hi, Summertime. Need any help with your bags?’

‘I’m fine, thanks.’

She shook her head firmly, but he followed her up the stairs anyway. They emerged into the warm air and headed for her Passat. A small black shadow flitted past across the night sky — a bat, hunting for insects.

‘Are you behaving yourself?’ Kent said when they reached the car.

‘Absolutely. I’m being positively angelic.’

‘Keep it up. Don’t do anything stupid.’

Kent seemed to be stone-cold sober, but he had stopped smiling when they left the club.

‘At least we’ve been lucky with the weather this summer,’ he said. ‘Everything else has gone to hell in a handcart, but the sun is shining.’ He looked over at the brightly lit hotel and added, ‘Eight pallets of vodka and Russian champagne... Know anyone who might be interested?’

Lisa shook her head. ‘How come?’

Kent smiled wearily. ‘That’s how much we’ve got left. Eight pallets, unsold. We had a major delivery by ship at midsummer, but we’ve sold only half the amount I’d calculated. It was the gastroenteritis... We’d have earned two million this summer, tax-free, if he hadn’t added water polluted with dung to our system.’

Lisa didn’t reply; she just looked at her watch. It was gone two o’clock. ‘I have to go,’ she said.

Kent moved a step closer. ‘Has she spoken to you?’

Lisa unlocked the car. ‘You mean Paulina? Yes, she has.’

‘And you’re in?’

‘That depends.’

‘On what?’ Kent’s voice had a harder edge now.

Lisa knew she had nothing going for her, but decided to give it a try anyway: ‘Then can I go home?’

‘You can go home if you do this,’ Kloss said, ‘or wherever the hell you like. I won’t go to the police. No one will come looking for you.’

Lisa nodded. ‘OK. What do I have to do?’

‘I want you to watch. I want you to keep watch on Villa Kloss, you and Paulina. Aron Fredh is bound to turn up there, I’m certain of it... and you know what he looks like.’

‘And what will you be doing while we’re keeping watch?’

Kent opened the car door for her and leaned closer. ‘I will be setting the trap.’

The telephone in Gerlof’s room rang after coffee time on Friday morning, and he picked up the receiver with a certain amount of trepidation.

‘Davidsson.’

‘Gerlof?’

He recognized both the voice and the accent. It was someone who had come back home to Öland, but not the person he had been hoping to speak to.

‘Good morning, Bill,’ he said. ‘How are things in Långvik?’

‘Fine, but it’s time to say goodbye. The summer is over... I’m heading back to Michigan tomorrow.’

‘That’s a shame. My boat isn’t quite ready yet.’

‘In that case, we’ll have to take her out next summer.’

‘Maybe,’ Gerlof said. ‘If I’m still here.’

Bill laughed. ‘We’re going to live until we’re a hundred, Gerlof.’

‘Look after yourself, Bill.’

‘I always do,’ the American said. ‘By the way, did you get hold of that guy you were looking for?’

‘Yes, I found him. But it turns out he didn’t actually come from the USA; he was in the Soviet Union.’

‘Oh yeah? What was he doing there?’

‘Who knows?... But I suppose he believed in a better future in the workers’ paradise.’

‘I guess so,’ Bill said. ‘Like Oswald.’

‘Oswald who?’

‘Lee Harvey Oswald. He went to the Soviet Union at the end of the fifties, then changed his mind and came back home with a Russian wife and a young daughter.’

It took a few seconds before Gerlof remembered the events in Dallas. ‘You mean the assassin,’ he said.

‘That’s right, the gunman who shot JFK,’ Bill said. ‘But I don’t suppose your guy is planning anything quite so terrible.’

‘Absolutely not,’ Gerlof said, feeling anything but certain.

Aron was sitting right at the top of his new hiding place. He had made himself at home as best he could, with blankets and a thin mattress, and he had slept well for the last few nights.

He felt safe, strangely enough, like an eagle in its nest at the top of a tree. He could see out towards the bay and the Sound, and inland as well.

This evening there were fluffy white clouds scudding in across the island. Some of them resembled human heads, others distorted monsters.

He could see the children gathering on the shore for their swimming lessons and holidaymakers running along the jetty and jumping into the water, from morning till night.

He could see cars coming and going.

He noticed that some visitors had already started shutting up their summer cottages, getting ready to head back home to the mainland.

The sun would carry on shining for a long time, but summer in the holiday village was almost over.

He gazed out across the Sound. The waves were tipped with white this evening, licked by the wind. The sea was immense and powerful, constantly moving.

Aron’s dream was to die here by the Sound. He wanted to look out across the water, then close his eyes, with peace in his heart. And perhaps it would happen, if he stayed close to the sea for the time he had left, and kept away from his enemies until it was time to face them.

He would be ready. Everything was prepared.

Slowly, Aron began to climb down from the tower, past his bed on the ground floor, out through the door and down the steps. His car was hidden among the trees a short distance away.

He was heading up to Marnäs for one last conversation with Gerlof Davidsson.

The war against the counter-revolution has been long and hard, and Vlad is very tired.

So many are gone now. Denounced and condemned. There is a constant insistence that every enemy who is unmasked must give the names of more enemies, who in turn give even more names, like an ever-growing mill wheel.

They have crushed so many.

Trushkin has been shot.

Teachers and scientists have also been shot.

Homosexuals and soldiers have been shot.

Poets, porters and priests have been shot.

So many.

Captain Rugajev, Vlad’s first commanding officer at Kresty, was removed by Zakowski, the top man in Leningrad. Zakowski was then shot by Jagoda, the NKVD Chief of Police; the following year, Jagoda was executed by his successor, the vodka drinker Nikolai Yezhov, a bloodthirsty individual who soon ended up in Lubyanka Prison, condemned to death by the new leader of the NKVD, Lavrenti Beria.