Janne Drangsholt - The Marvelous Misadventures of Ingrid Winter

“It’s best if you don’t know.”

“But I was the one who got it!”

“Stole it,” I said. “Stole it.”

“You know —”

I cut him off.

“We have to stop thinking about it, pretend it doesn’t exist.”

“Pretend what doesn’t exist?” Ingvill asked.

“Nothing,” I said.

“Nothing,” Peter said.

“I wish you didn’t exist,” she said to me.

“And I wish you—” I began, but Peter elbowed me in the side.

“I think Irina’s interested in you,” Ingvill told Peter.

I started laughing uncontrollably, but stopped when I saw the look on his face.

“Why are you laughing?”

“I’m sorry, but she’s not interested in you.”

“How do you know that?” Ingvill asked.

“I know.”

“ How do you know?”

“First of all she looks like Nastassja Kinski.”

“So?”

“And, by the way, Ivan is also completely uninterested in you .”

Ingvill scoffed and walked over to the bar to buy herself a glass of wine.

“I’ll have you know that she took my arm right before we reached the hotel,” Peter said. “ And said she was looking forward to seeing me again. Plus she wondered if we could meet, just the two of us. Tonight. Before the opera.”

“What? When was this?”

“Right after she finished her phone call.”

That silenced me for a second. And frightened me more.

“Peter, it’s a honey trap!”

“What?”

“You mentioned them yourself, just yesterday! It’s when a secret agent lures someone with access to sensitive information into an emotional relationship or, better yet, into compromising themselves, and then pressures him or her into spilling the beans.”

“But Ingrid…”

“You said Irina wanted to meet you for a drink?”

“Yes, but…”

“It’s a well-known fact that the Soviet intelligence system used a lot of honey traps. You know, back in the sixties, even the wife of Norway’s prime minister got tricked.”

“What?”

“Werna Gerhardsen, during a trip to Armenia. Apparently it’s true.”

“What?”

My head had started throbbing, and suddenly I was incredibly exhausted.

“Don’t walk into a honey trap, Peter.”

“Maybe I could just go a little ways into the honey trap, but without compromising any sensitive information? You know, kind of turn the tables? Besides, I don’t know anything, anyway. You’re the one with the icon after all. I’ve hardly even seen it.”

The pounding in my head increased.

“Good news,” Ingvill reported as she returned from the bar.

“Yes?” Peter said expectantly.

“What is it?” I asked warily.

“Ivan called. The Russian government extended our visas so we can stay two more days. We landed a meeting with the university president, which according to Ivan is like getting an audience with Putin. I shouldn’t say so myself, but clearly there’s a good chance that my transnational socializing skills have finally borne concrete results.”

That was when it happened, right then, the terrible thing I’d been waiting for, the thing that had been lurking, lingering at the edge of my consciousness, the sinkhole that so far had been a sleeper cell, waiting to suck me in.

I had a vision of myself in the gulag. Bald, with a bunch of tattoos I’d given myself when I was high. How long would it take before I was addicted to opiates? Probably half a day. And then I’d have to turn tricks to get more heroin. Until I died of an overdose. Icon Ingrid.

I tried to call Bjørnar, but couldn’t get through, so I had one of the amazons at the front desk call the chair of the department instead.

She was in an unusually good mood.

“I have to say, I had my doubts about you, Ingrid.” She chuckled. “But this is looking really promising. Really promising.”

“But I…”

“Go to the meeting with the university president and we’ll let bygones be bygones. I’m going to meet with the administration here myself next week. As a department, we’re not all that popular with them these days. A cooperative agreement with Saint Petersburg State University could turn everything around, in a jiffy. Do a good job, Ingrid, and all your mistakes—the defiance, the not coming to meetings, the mindfuckery—will be forgotten. I believe in you. Good luck!”

She hung up.

“But I have to go home!” I shouted into a black hole.

And I repeated that to Bjørnar once I had the same amazon dial him.

“I have to come home,” I repeated. “We’re moving.”

“Well, there’s home and then there’s home,” he said, deadpan.

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing. I’m just exhausted. We had to give someone a tour of the house this afternoon, and the place was a zoo. Alva was crying, and they just had to look around on their own because I needed to make dinner. And now I have to work all evening, because we have a contract that needs to be finished by Friday morning.”

“I’m so sorry for being here and not there.”

“We’re going to have to postpone the move,” he said, “until you come home. It’s not like there’s anyone who wants to move into this house right away, anyway.”

“Postpone the move?”

My cold sweat was back.

“What did you think? That I was going to do it alone? We haven’t even reserved a moving van yet. And we’re nowhere near finished packing up the kitchen. And if you’re going to be off dancing the kalinka for a few more days, I don’t really see any other option.”

“It’s not that I want to stay here longer!”

He snorted.

“Obviously, but you have to. You said so yourself. To keep your job. And you need to keep your job. I mean, I earn plenty of money, but no one can make that much money. And besides, it’s not like we’re ever going to go to Russia on vacation, right?”

“Not even to visit me in the gulag?”

“If you end up in the gulag, you’ll just have to do the best you can. I’ll send you cigarettes so you can trade for deodorant and toothpaste, but we’re not coming to visit.”

“But surely the kids would want to see me?”

“I’ll tell them you’re dead.”

“Dead?”

“Yup. Then I don’t have to deal with all the fuss. Maybe we’ll get a dog to replace you.”

“But… To be or not to be?”

“Not if one of us is in the gulag.”

He thought we were kidding around, and part of me was glad. Aside from the day I told him about this trip, it had been a long time since our communication had been anything other than a bare-bones exchange of information. But another part of me was dreadfully scared, and I broke into a cold sweat again, wanting to tell Bjørnar all about the icon and the misunderstanding and the possible secret agents and how the gulag thing wasn’t actually hypothetical joking around.

How likely was it that this phone was bugged? In Homeland it took them only three or four hours to install cameras and microphones, and here they’d had a whole day. So the likelihood was probably around 170 percent.

“We’re going to the opera tonight,” I said breezily.

“What are you going to see?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, have a good time.”

“Thanks. Hope your day goes well. Sorry you have to man the ship alone. I know it’s not easy.”

“I’m just looking forward to it being over.”

“Me, too.”

I went up to my room and lay down on the bed, so that I was free to study the ceiling. The microphones were probably attached to the back of the pictures and the mirror. The cameras could be anywhere. The worst thing was that I couldn’t find them and get rid of them, because that would make me look even guiltier.