...
In Scandinavia, boot camp lasted for a full year. This was the year when all recruits were turned into passable soldiers. Male and female recruits were integrated during most of that year except for physical skills courses. They also had their own barracks and their own gyms where they could work on improving their physical fitness.
In her first week of camp, Benedikta was working out in the women's gym in off hours when a stranger started exercising next to her. Benedikta nodded at her and went back to stretching.
"Your name is Benedikta Ekelund and you're here because you were accused of a capital crime. You signed a written confession. Don't look at me. Continue stretching. I'm a friend."
...
"I'm here to tell you that an error occurred while your application form was being processed. Somebody forgot to enter the nature of your recruitment and the reasons why you're here. You'll be free to leave the army in three years, exactly like every other recruit. The army has no record of your crime or of your confession."
...
"We're hoping you'll stay longer than three years. There are a number of people like us in the military. We're all here because we went through an experience similar to yours. If you want to know more, here's how to contact us. Many women soldiers work out in bare feet. I like to place a towel under each foot for hygienic reasons. When I'm going from one exercise station to another, I will drape one towel over my left arm, and carry the end of the other towel in my right hand, flicking it slowly as I walk. If you do the same and if one of us is in the gym, you'll have a training partner. We keep our presence secret because the rape that you must have experienced is not an isolated event. It was not your fault. You did not cause it to happen. Talk with one of us if you want to learn more."
Benedikta looked down at the woman's feet. Two towels. She nodded at her.
"A word of advice. Women like us are used to having a scarf over our heads. We unconsciously tuck our hair inside the scarf whether the scarf is there or not. I knew that you were one of us simply by watching you for a few minutes. You won't try to tuck your hair inside a non-existent scarf if you cut most of it off. Do that tonight. You won't be safe here if you don't."
With that, the woman left carrying the towels as she had described.
# # # # # # # #
Benedikta had success in her first year of training in spite of being two years younger than her fellow recruits. She proved herself to be athletically gifted. She had a gawky way of walking, but that disappeared when she ran or jumped. She was always first in the obstacle courses, even against the men. Nobody was as agile. In other challenges, she was always well ahead of the other girls and was competitive with the boys.
Benedikta had inherited her mother's intelligence. Now that her peers accepted her as a normal person, she enjoyed classes and learned quickly. But she stood out the most in the combat exercises when soldiers were expected to respond quickly and act decisively. One of her instructors wrote on an assessment form: "Benedikta is fearless in combat situations." She didn't know that Bean was fearless because she didn't care if she lived or died. Her preference was to die. She couldn't kill herself – that would produce the wrong kind of letter to her parents. But a letter home praising her for dying for her country would be acceptable. This would prove her worth to those Scandinavians who hated her kind.
...
On the day that boot camp ended, Benedikta was lounging on her bunk, waiting for divisional assignments to be posted when a corporal approached her bunk.
"You've done well in your training," she commended. "Your instructors have written glowing reports. You'll be posted to an infantry division on the Finnish border. That order won't be posted for another hour."
Benedikta said nothing. She had found that saying nothing was a good way of keeping out of trouble.
"You and I have a mutual acquaintance. A certain police chief. He has a picture of me. I'm lying on a mattress in a police cell and I have no clothes on. He told me that if I didn't keep my mouth shut about him raping me, he would send that picture to my parents. He's bound to have the same picture of you and he would have given you the same warning."
Again Benedikta said nothing.
"I'm going to the gym to have a workout. After that, I'll post the order you've been waiting for. You should join me in the gym. You're looking a little pudgy."
Benedikta watched as the corporal opened a small sports bag, took out two towels, and arranged them in her hands just so.
...
In the privacy of an empty gym, the corporal described her own experience. She had come out of a store to find the chief waiting for her. He accused her of shoplifting, arrested her, took her to a cell far inside the station, and forced her to disrobe to prove that she wasn't concealing her thefts under her clothes. When she had removed enough clothing to show that the accusation was false, the police chief had pulled the item she had allegedly stolen out of his pocket. "I found this when I searched you," he accused.
Benedikta learned that this kind of arrest was being duplicated around the country. False arrests, forced confessions, rapes, and pictures. It couldn't be a coincidence. Somebody somewhere was telling police how they could rape the women of their religion without getting caught.
...
"We can't prove it," the corporal admitted as they rested by the weight bench. "We believe the young men raping our girls in the cities are also part of that plan. Some of our girls won't bring charges because they're too ashamed. They think that they did something to cause the rape. A dress that was too short; long hair not covered completely; or perhaps a direct look at a man's face. But that had nothing to do with the rape. The men raped them because they wanted to and they knew they'd get away with it."
"They get away with it?"
"Always. No rapist appears in front of a judge these days. We know that some girls have brought charges, but have withdrawn them. We believe that some police officer interviewed them in an empty cell and gave them some photographic reasons why they should drop the charges. These women won't talk to us."
"Us?"
"We have a few women who are white enough to pass as pure Scandinavian. Some are in the military; some are in the police."
...
"We know that a rogue unit in the military has soldiers that disguise themselves, commit rapes in one of our communities, and disappear. Everybody in the community knows about the rapes and who was victimized. Even though the women could not have brought it upon themselves, the community and their own families treat these women as unclean, unworthy, and dishonoured. They lose their family and their community. We can't find any information on these soldiers. We thought with you going into the infantry, you might be able to find them for us."
# # # # # # # #
During her year in the infantry, Benedikta went from hating herself to hating her religion. The way they had to dress, the way they had to be subservient to men, and the way they had to act in public. They mustn't make eye contact. They mustn't wear clothes that might inflame a man. Why should women have to dress so that men wouldn't become aroused? Why shouldn't men learn to control their urges instead?
Why were women being guided by words that had been written many centuries earlier? Men had written these words in a world where women were possessions like camels and sheep. The world was a different place now. The religion's rules wouldn't work. For example, when facing a potentially dangerous situation, their Good Book required the man in the family to shoot an arrow over the head of the potential combatant. To give him fair warning. For the people in their religion who took the word of the gospel literally, and there were many, how could that work in a world where bows and arrows no longer existed? But yet, that's what they heard they should do in their church services.
Benedikta made no contact with the towel women. In her view, their cause was hopeless. How could a few women change the way an entire nation or religion operated? She was still intent on killing hersel
f, but doing so with honour.
# # # # # # # #
In August 2082, Bean's file was sent to the Office of Special Operations and she was called in for a meeting. Their recruiter asked Bean to sign up for Special Operations when they thought she was 17 but was actually 15. Her first posting would be as a lieutenant. She asked if her work would be dangerous. The recruiter said Yes. Bean said Yes too.
Her training now shifted to rigorous conditioning and strength building. Bean's size gave her an advantage. Long arms for defense, long lean muscles for lifting and throwing attackers around. She learned how to kill in numerous ways. She became lethal. She didn't realize that she was being trained to be an assassin. She wouldn't have cared.
Bean's life changed in June 2083 when one of the visiting instructors at the Nighttime Infiltration course asked her if she'd like to try a real operation for a change. One that would take her out of the country. Bean asked if it would be dangerous. She received the expected answer and replied as the reader would anticipate.
That instructor's name was Jakobina. She was a young officer with some impressive operational results. The Finns were acting up; certain measures had to be taken. Benedikta and Jakobina were sent as an undercover team to what had once been a province of Scandinavia and would become so again if events unfolded the way the military wanted. The undercover team was ordered to upset the Finish military without getting caught. Finnish deaths from unfortunate accidents were allowed.
It was during this period that they became known as Jak and the Beanstalk. Jak showed Bean that the first thing you should always do when you're given an undercover job is to find Finns who were vulnerable. Just as Scandinavian wolves would separate the weakest moose from the herd, it was their job to identify the weakest Finn. Appropriate pressure could then be bought to bear depending on what the mission's goals were. In this way, Jak and the Beanstalk were able to access confidential reports on troop movements and where certain key soldiers would be at certain times. Jak would deliver the fatal accident; Bean would serve as spotter.
The focus on finding the vulnerable prompted the third step in Bean's transformation. She recognized that it wasn't her mother's religion that had been instrumental in her rape. There were many admirable components to that religion so long as you didn't take each word in the Good Book literally. It provided a guide to how to live in a society, like her army's Military Code of Conduct told recruits what they could do and what they couldn't. Thinking of the Good Book in that way meant that the rule about not stealing a neighbour's camel was now a rule about not stealing a neighbour's copter. The point was: don't take something that doesn't belong to you. One didn't shoot an arrow over a combatant’s head any longer. But yes, in today's world you should face that combatant and issue a warning. The point was: Don't kill somebody from behind and without warning. And that was beginning to bother Bean. Because she was killing from the shadows.
But Bean had sworn an oath to Queen Freya that she would defend the country from the actions of their enemies. Bean was on a military mission; she was defending her country. The people she was killing were enemies.
For her part, Jak was passionate about her job. There was nothing that she wouldn't do for the mission. A little torture, an assassination or two, and even sex. Jak had no personal interest in sex, but if the mission required it, she wouldn't hesitate to use her body to lure men into a trap. In that situation, Bean would do the killing. And Bean learned to accept that part of the mission. Because she had sworn that oath to her queen to kill her country's enemies.
# # # # # # # #
In June 2084, Jak was assigned to a new mission outside of the country and Bean returned to base. The Special Ops commander was reluctant to partner her with another operative when he had been told that Jak would return in a year. Good undercover teams are hard to develop. When you have a team as good as Jak and the Beanstalk, you don't break it apart; you put it on stand-by.
Bean was given an assignment as martial arts instructor in the military's main base. She taught three classes a day, one for each of the martial arts specialties that she had mastered. The rest of the time, she supervised the gym. For the Beanstalk, that meant that she'd offer to fill up a sports team if an extra player were needed; or she'd serve as a partner for somebody trying to work on a particular skill in a particular sport. She had no school-based experience in playing sports, but in this assignment, she learned the fundamentals of all gym-based sports just by being asked to join in. She became particularly good in volleyball, for example, as her dominating height allowed her to control the net. In badminton, her long arms and her quickness meant that she could return shots that most players could not. In basketball, her height allowed her to play with the men and hold her own. Like some basketball forwards who had potential close to the net, she developed a hankering to shoot from behind the 3-point line instead. She was remarkably adept at missing every shot she took. None came close. Opponents would tease her and goad her into trying another 3-pointer. She always lived down to expectations.
Living in Stockholm, and working a 9-5 job, Bean had ample time to develop a social life. She was as successful at that as she was at hitting a 3-pointer. The Beanstalk wasn't attractive and she was self-conscious of that and her gawky height. She was very reserved when she was with others – probably a by-product of being a trained assassin and having a number of brutal murders to her credit. To be perfectly blunt, she was cold. Even in sports where people clearly enjoyed being with her, she was business-like, closed to all hints of a possible date, and not the type of person that would be invited to a group party.
But Bean did go out to pubs and during the year that she was working in the gym, she probably hit every pub in Stockholm at least five or six times. She wasn't a person who would drown her sorrows in drink. She limited herself to two drinks before leaving the pub and going home. She never went to two pubs on the same night.
At the beginning, Bean went to the pubs to watch other people and see how they interacted. Bean had learned that a key to becoming better in volleyball, for example, was to watch a good player and copy what that person did. So she went to pubs to watch and learn. She knew that nobody wanted to be around her; she wanted to change that.
One summer night, she was on her first drink and watching a couple sitting two tables away from her. The girl had been with three other girls, but they had left. Shortly afterwards, a man approached her. She could see him working very hard at getting an invitation to join her. When the girl allowed him to buy her a drink, he came back to the table, pulled a chair close to hers, and sat down within touching distance. Everything thing about him screamed: Girl! Go home, and be sure that nobody follows behind you. The girl didn't. Instead she listened to him as he talked, smiled, and joked. Bean recognized the type. Persistent, charming, and totally interested in only one thing. He reminded her of the boy that she had murdered. Bean watched them leave together. She was tempted to follow them to protect her, but realized it was none of her business. This was a grown woman. Bean was only 17 years old.
Two weeks afterwards, Beanstalk was in the same pub and noticed the same woman going from table to table with several papers in her hand. When she stopped at Bean's table, she asked, "Have you seen this man in the last couple of weeks?" The poster had a good likeness of the man's face. Hand-drawn, but accurate. The poster also had the woman's name and postal address on the bottom. The woman's face was revealing. Eyes that were still black plus a missing front tooth.
"He beat you?"
"First, and then raped me," she blurted.
"Leave the poster with me," Bean replied. "I'll keep an eye out for him."
The Beanstalk had just found a hobby.
# # # # # # # #
The lethal missions with Jak had triggered Bean's fourth transformation. She accepted that controlled violence was honourable in certain situations. She hadn't wanted to be involved with the towel women because she couldn't see how they could succeed.
Find information on a platoon. What then? Encourage men to be respectful to women?
But women were being targeted for rape everywhere in Scandinavia. If she couldn't change the men, at least she could reduce the risks that other women would face. And so she found, tracked, and killed rapists as a hobby.
In doing so, some people would consider Bean a sociopath. A crazy person who would kill without hesitation. Without feeling. Perhaps she was a sociopath. Some readers may consider her as such. But perhaps her actions were understandable given the trauma of her own rape, the training the military gave her afterwards, and Jak's influence in convincing her that anything was permissible so long as it had an honourable purpose. Some people would consider Bean's actions as appropriate reactions to threatening circumstance. And make no mistake, there were threatening circumstances. When Bean went out on a date, she was in danger of being raped every time. Here's how a typical Beanstalk date would play out.
Bean would dress as most women did, but conservatively. She wouldn't wear her military fatigues into a pub any longer. She would enter a pub, sit by herself, order a drink, and nurse it. She might even order a second drink. If she finished the second drink, and nobody had approached her, she'd leave the bar and nobody would die that night.
However some men did approach her. She knew that they weren't approaching her because she was attractive. The men who dropped by her table were predators. She was strictly a conquest for them; something to brag about. She turned them all away.
Some came back for a second attempt. These were the charmers; the men who were convinced in their own mind that no woman could resist them if they could first open up a conversation with them. These men reminded Bean of her attempted rapist. Most of them took the second rejection and moved on. Some didn't.
A pattern emerged. A charmer, a truly dedicated hunter would sit down and begin a conversation. Or at least try to. Bean would listen as he told her about himself. She would refuse the offer of another drink. The same for a dance. She would look directly at him; she would not show herself as a weak vulnerable woman in any way. Several times during their conversation, she would break into his tale of woe, or accomplishment, or brag to say, "I do not want to have sex with you."