Janne Drangsholt - The Marvelous Misadventures of Ingrid Winter

“What didn’t I do, Ms. Know-It-All?” asked Ms. Tropical Fruit Salad.

I rolled my eyes and walked over to the bar. It was completely silent in there with the exception of some quiet murmuring from a Russian news channel on TV.

“Bad news,” Peter said when I returned.

“What?”

“A reliable source informs me that the dean won’t approve the bilateral cooperation agreement between our respective universities,” Ingvill said.

“Why? Things went so well at the meeting today. It was all friendship this and friendship that, in the past and the future and the present.”

She scoffed.

“ You thought it went well? Then you must not know much about Russian body language.”

I wanted to tell her what I thought about her body language, but I refrained. Instead I turned to Peter.

“Don’t you think it went well?”

“Yes, yes.” He nodded, his mouth full of cocktail nuts. “We got presents and everything. Nice presents.”

Ingvill scoffed again.

“You guys are clearly novices when it comes to internationalization.”

“That’s true,” I said, taking a sip of my wine. “And if I’m not mistaken, you’ve never been any farther east than the outlet mall just across the border into Sweden.”

“Maybe we can make a better impression at tomorrow’s meetings,” Peter said, sounding hopeful. “Don’t we have three of them?”

“Ivan said there’s only going to be one. The other two were canceled. And of course it doesn’t help that the icon disappeared. No, I think we’re going to have to use the same tactic we’re using back home. I can be the hard-liner, and—”

“What icon?” Peter interrupted.

“That picture the dean showed us. In his office,” Ingvill said. “Ivan says it’s extremely valuable. Priceless, apparently. If you ask me, it looked kind of junky. That Christ figure looked like something my niece might have painted. But anyway, it’s gone. And apparently that’s a problem for us.”

“Why is that a problem for us?” I asked. “We didn’t take it.”

Peter looked down into his beer glass.

“Maybe not,” said Ingvill, “but incidents like that aren’t good for bilateralization. They lead to people looking for scapegoats. Studies have shown when that happens people tend to hammer down the nail that sticks out, so to speak. According to Ivan there’s a heated search under way at the university right now. Apparently the dean is up in arms. And that’s not good for anyone. I was supposed to meet Ivan tonight, but now he can’t. Luckily we get to go to the Hermitage together now.”

She stood up and walked over to the bar to buy another glass of wine. Peter gave me an odd look. He opened his mouth, but then closed it again.

“What is it?” I asked wearily.

“You know that icon…” Peter began.

“The Dean Icon?”

“Whoops.”

“What do you mean ‘whoops’?”

“I have it. In my room.”

“What do you mean ‘I have it in my room’?”

“What do you think I mean?”

“ You have it? You mean you took it?”

I half expected him to start laughing and say the whole thing was some silly joke, but he just nodded gloomily and drained his beer glass.

“I thought it was a present!”

“A present ?”

“I mean, they’ve been giving us gifts the whole time! Here, have some vodka. Here, have some chocolate. Here, have some mints. Here, have some of this and some of that. He was standing there talking about friendship and war and peace and, well, I was just absolutely sure he meant the icon as a gift. So I accepted it. On our behalf. On behalf of Norway. And a little bit for the Queen.”

“You mean Queen Elizabeth?”

He nodded.

I tried to wrap my brain around what was actually an un-brain-wrappable situation. Blood pounded in my head, and the soles of my feet started to tingle. I pictured a flaming sinkhole. I took another large gulp of wine.

“ When did you take it?”

“While you guys were hugging and kissing each other. I’d already stepped away from the table, but I went all the way back over and put it in my bag so we wouldn’t come off as impolite. I mean, it’s bad enough that we didn’t bring any presents for them. Not bringing presents is a terrible move for internationalization.”

“Not as terrible as stealing the dean’s icon.”

“It’s not funny! Do you know what they’re going to do to me? People get arrested for being gay here! I’m going to end up in one of those cages that punk band had to sit in. What was their name again?”

“Pussy Riot.”

“Yes. And that finance guy…”

“Khodorkovsky.”

“Yes, Khovsky! Pussy! In a cage! And then they’ll send me to the gulag.”

He glanced nervously in Ingvill’s direction.

“Don’t say anything to Ingvill,” he whispered urgently.

“Why not? She’s such a nice person, right? Plus, she’s the hard-liner, not the bad cop, like me.”

He gave me a resigned look.

“Ingvill is a nice person, but she’s also a little too… into Ivan. She’s sure to tell him. And then it’s curtains for us.”

“What do you mean ‘us’?”

“We’re in this together!”

“We are not —”

I was interrupted by Ingvill’s return to the table with a fresh glass of wine. She looked even more dissatisfied now than when she first noticed I was in the bar. Actually her facial expression was kind of Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction , which scared me.

“What is it?”

“I just talked to Ivan. He can’t go to the Hermitage with us. He’s too busy at the university. Artemis is going to take us.”

“Artemis is going to take us?” Peter repeated, looking a little happier. “Oh, I like him. He’s a hoot.”

“Who’s Artemis?” I asked.

“I have to call Ivan back,” Ingvill said, getting up. “He can’t do this to us.”

“No, don’t bother. It’s fine by me if Artemis takes us,” Peter tried to say, but she brushed him off.

“It’s not fine,” she said and stormed out of the room with her phone in her hand.

“Who’s Artemis?”

“The one who grew up in Libya.”

“Who?”

“The one whose father was a military adviser for Gaddafi. The one who had private lessons with Saif.”

“Saif Gaddafi?”

“Correct.”

“Have we even met this man?”

Peter chuckled.

“You can be quite funny. He stopped by a little while ago. I met him in the lobby. Had a lot of questions. Tons. He was particularly interested in you, actually.”

“In me ?”

Peter winked.

“But I don’t even know who he is.”

“You’ll get to meet him soon.”

“What kind of questions did he ask?”

“What kind of art we were interested in and what historical periods we liked, things like that. Clearly he’s taking his job quite seriously. I think he really wants to help us get the most out of our visit to the Hermitage.”

I pondered this information. I didn’t like it.

“He’s definitely a secret agent,” I finally said.

“Who?”

“Artemis.”

Peter chuckled.

“He’s no agent.”

“Hello? Libya? Military adviser? Gaddafi? Of course he’s a secret agent!”

“He’s definitely no agent! I served in the British Army and I certainly think I could spot an agent if I saw him. Or her. There are female agents, too, you know. Honey traps.”

“No doubt he’s coming to keep an eye on us,” I said. “To find out if we have the icon. If it’s as valuable as Ingvill says, anyway. No one really cares about these internationalization things.”