Less than half an hour later a van had parked next to the phone booth and two people stepped out of it with huge smiles on their faces. One was Anders, the other Hans Christian Bille. They had greeted Soren and told him he would never have to be alone anymore. They were going to take him in and help him get back on his feet again. He was to consider them as more than friends, they said. They were family now. Soren had liked the sound of that. He needed friends and he desperately wanted a new family. He had turned his back on his own many years before. Tired of them always being drunk and never taking care of anything, least of all him. He was sick of being their doormat that they used in any way they wanted. Tired of being the only grown-up in that house, tired of never having had any childhood, tired of being embarrassed by them and living a life scared to death of coming home from school to a house full of drunks who would amuse themselves by slapping him around or ordering him to go and get more beers and cigarettes.
Now Soren Sejr had found a new family and they would never treat him like that, he remembered thinking on his way to the camp in the white van.
Soren Sejr touched the iron door where he knew the young girl was waiting for him on the other side, waiting for him to enter and begin her training. She was his now, his slave and he would make her do whatever he told her to, he thought laughing to himself while humming the lyrics to Hotel California.
“You can check-out anytime you like,” he sang while finding the key to the door in his pocket.
“But you can never leave.”
Chapter 35
“Radioactive material? In your dad’s blood?”
Sune stared at me like had I told him I had just seen the Pope walking around in his underwear. He simply didn’t believe a word of it. I had asked him to come out of the room and told him what the doctor had told me. Now he was shaking his head in disbelief. “How? Why? What about our kids?”
I shook my head as well. “I don’t know, Sune. The doctor told me he didn’t know much either. Only that the lab had detected polonium in my dad’s blood sample and that it might be the cause of his blood clot.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he exclaimed. “So now we’re all exposed to it, I guess?”
“That’s what they need to find out. SIS is on their way here to start the investigation. I guess they’ll check our blood as well.”
“Well that’s just perfect, isn’t it?” he said stretching out his arms resignedly.
“Hey we’re all in the same boat here,” I said.
Sune looked at me. “Yes, well that’s just the way it always is, isn’t it? Your boat, your problems. You always drag the rest of us with you into all your trouble without even asking us if we want this, if we want things to be like they are. Maybe, just maybe people want something different than you do,” he said. Then he turned around and went back into the room.
I was shocked. Mostly by his reaction. So much for that calm always positive-thinking guy that I was in love with. Who was this?
I wondered if he was going to tell everybody what was going on or if he wanted me to do it. It wasn’t exactly a pleasant message to have to deliver to your family. How was I supposed to do it without scaring the kids senseless? I sighed deeply and rubbed my forehead. It was moments like these we were supposed to stand together, I thought. As a couple we were supposed to support each other in difficult situations. Not fight about it looking to blame each other. I felt tired. I stared at a clock on the wall. It was past noon. I needed to get away from my family for a little, away from Sune.
I knew exactly where I wanted to go.
Dr. Wad wasn’t easy to locate, but with a little help from several nurses I managed to find him sitting in the waiting room talking to some poor relatives who were waiting to hear news about a loved one. I waited till he was done then I approached him.
“Dr. Wad?” I said.
“Rebekka Franck,” he answered and shook my hand. “How is the head?”
I felt the bandage from yesterday. I had to admit I hadn’t thought about it all day. “Great,” I said.
“Good.”
“How is the woman?”
Dr. Wad nodded slowly. “Stable,” he said. “Or more like status quo. Still unconscious but we managed to stop the bleeding. We still can’t seem to figure out what is wrong with her.”
“Will she make it?” I asked feeling slightly nervous about the answer.
Dr. Wad shook his head. “I don’t know. My hopes are not high. But I do know that if she doesn’t make it then you hitting her with your car has nothing to do with it. I already told that to the police. They told me they will not be investigating this any further. This woman was already sick when she ran into you. It might be something she has eaten. She kept throwing up even after you brought her here and she has some kind of internal bleeding that we can’t seem to stop. We hope to know more once the lab is done with her blood work. But being hit by a car couldn’t have put her in this condition. That’s the only thing I’m certain of in this case.”
I felt huge relief in my entire body. I was still worried about her and felt somehow connected to her, but now I had the doctor’s word for it. It wasn’t my fault. It really wasn’t.
“Have you identified her yet?” I asked.
“As a matter of fact we have,” he said. “Well the police did. Dental records helped them. Her name is Mette Grithfeldt.”
“Is she in any way related to the late Asger Grithfeldt?” I asked.
“The finance mogul, yes. It’s his daughter.”
“I thought she disappeared many years ago. I remember they searched for her everywhere and even had a reward out to anyone who would bring information about her to them. That was back in the beginning of the nineties.”
Dr. Wad nodded. “Yes that’s her. Her parent’s lawyer managed to find her when the parents died and she inherited all their money. The police talked to him earlier today and explained the situation. They asked him if she had any relatives that we needed to inform, but he said they were all gone except for a few distant cousins that she had no contact with.”
“Did she live at the camp?” I asked. “Is she a member of ’The Way’”?
Dr. Wad looked at me with surprise. “As a matter of fact she is,” he said. “How did you know that?”
“Just a hunch.”
Chapter 36
The SIS arrived later in the afternoon. Men wearing heavy suits and masks entered Dad’s room where we were all waiting. They examined us, using small hand held detectors and taking blood samples. They took our clothes off and put them in sealed containers, after giving us a bath they gave us hospital clothes to wear.
I thought they were exaggerating and was worried about how much they scared the kids. I managed to explain to Julie and Tobias that we were going to be checked out to make sure that we weren’t sick, but that there was nothing to be scared of. Julie knew me way too well to fall for that. She looked at me with frightened eyes.
“It’s going to be just fine,” I repeated to her. “They’re just checking us, like the doctor checks you up every now and then,” I told her.
It didn’t calm her down. Once they were done with her examination she ran to me and hugged me tight. She was crying silently not wanting to let go of my leg.
“They took samples from my hair, Mommy. I’m scared. Are we going to die? Are we Mommy?”
“Shh, it’ll be all over soon, sweetie,” I said while stroking her hair. “Don’t worry. It’ll be just fine.”
I sincerely hoped I was right.
We were told to stay in Dad’s room to wait for the results. The SIS told us they would go to our vacation rental next and search to see if they could detect the source there. While we waited I did what any sensible worried mother would do. I grabbed my iPhone and started searching radiation exposure and how it affected the human body. It wasn’t exactly calming to put it mildly. Sune sat next to me and read over my shoulder.
“Loss of hair, brain damage,” he started re
ading out loud. “Radiation kills nerve cells and small blood vessels, and can cause seizures and immediate death.”
Sune sighed and looked away. I felt how afraid he was, it was almost like he was struck and paralyzed by the fear inside of him. Still, he kept reading out loud, feeding the fear growing in all of us.
“Data from Hiroshima and Nagasaki show that symptoms may persist for up to ten years and may also have an increased long-term risk for leukemia and lymphoma. Intense exposure to radioactive material would do immediate damage to small blood vessels and probably cause heart failure and death directly. The radiation will begin to destroy the cells in the body that divide rapidly. These including blood, GI tract, reproductive and hair cells, and harms their DNA and RNA of surviving cells. Wow. That’s festive,” he continued. “If it doesn’t kill us now it will give us a slow and painful death, like cancer or leukemia instead.”
I sighed and looked at him. He was scared. Naturally. I was too. I grabbed his hand. I looked into his eyes. “It’ll be fine,” I said with my most reassuring voice. “You told me it will, remember?”
Sune scoffed. Then he smiled. “Yeah. I know. Sorry about that. I’m just panicking slightly.”
I squeezed his hand. “I am too. But we’re in this together. We need to keep it together - for them,” I said and nodded in Julie and Tobias’ direction. “We need to be strong and not lose it for their sake, alright?”
Sune exhaled and nodded. Julie and Tobias were holding hands while sitting quietly on Dad’s bed. He was trying to cheer them up by putting on a puppet show with a pair of socks. It made me chuckle. If Dad was not panicking then there was no reason for us to be, I thought. So far he was the only one we knew for sure had been exposed to anything and that was such a small dosage that it might not affect him further at all. This was not a time to panic. I looked at Sune again. He was pale and scared. He suddenly reminded me of a little child. I stroked his cheek.
“It will be fine,” I repeated. “Trust me.”
He grabbed my hand and kissed it. “I sure hope you’re right. I really truly hope you are.”
On my phone I Googled ‘polonium’ thinking I remembered hearing about it somewhere before. I was right. In November 2006 the former officer of the Russian Federal Security Service, FSB and KGB - Alexander Litvinenko - was allegedly killed by polonium poisoning. According to the article in Wikipedia Litvinenko “suddenly fell ill and was hospitalized. He died three weeks later, becoming the first confirmed victim of lethal polonium-210 induced acute radiation syndrome. According to doctors, ‘Litvinenko’s murder represents an ominous landmark: the beginning of an era of nuclear terrorism.’ “
Furthermore polonium was suspected to have killed the French scientist Irène Joliot-Curie. She was accidentally exposed to it in 1946 when a capsule exploded in her laboratory. Ten years later she died from leukemia.
Rumors also had it that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s clothes had unusually high concentrate of polonium, but that was never confirmed.
I looked up and stared at Julie and Tobias. This thing could have long term effects like it had on Irène Joliot-Curie. If Julie had been exposed to it could it cause health issues for her later on in life? I couldn’t bear thinking about it. It was obvious that none of us had suffered from any short term affects, so I wasn’t scared that we were about to all die here and now, but what was this going to mean to all of us in the long run? I felt a pinch in my stomach, a pinch of fear.
Chapter 37
Soren Sejr looked at the young girl in the corner. She was curled up, staring at him with fierce eyes, a fierceness he would soon get out of her. He always did no matter how long it would take.
Soren approached the girl, she was trembling, hissing trying to keep him away, covering her face with her arms. He kneeled in front of her and reached out his hand. He put it on her arm. She pulled it away with a loud hiss.
“Let me out of here,” she groaned. “You have no right to keep me in here.”
Soren Sejr smiled. Like he always did in this situation. Smiled with compassion and empathy, but not without displaying authority and letting them know that they were at his mercy, and he was the one to decide what would happen to them. He liked them like this, just before they were broken down. It was these moments he enjoyed the most, when they still believed they could fight him, when they still thought they could resist and get away, but knew deep down inside that they would eventually cave in and give up. They all came to that point when they realized that it was no use fighting this. Once they gave up he could begin to fill their minds with the right thinking. The kind of thinking that would make them obey his every word.
“You will get out of this room. When you’re ready,” he said with deep assuring voice. “But right now you’re not well, we need to help you get back on your path with God. It’s God’s will. He brought you here.”
Soren stroked the girl’s cheek gently while smiling. Oh the smoothness and freshness of young skin. He always enjoyed touching it especially the new ones. It excited him so.
“Don’t worry. I’m here to help you. You’ll thank me one day.”
The girl was sobbing now, first sign of the brokenness starting in her. She was about to give in now. This one wasn’t going to take long. She was feisty still, but Soren had seen worse cases. He had taken care of them all.
Just like the Priest had taken care of him.
Just arriving at the camp Soren had thought he was only going to stay there for a few days and nights - just until he found a place to live and could take care of himself again. He probably only needed a few days to recover he thought as they showed him a small room at the camp with nothing but a bed, a dresser and a huge wooden cross on the wall over the bed. On the dresser lay a book that Anders Granlund had written and a silver cross that Soren still carried with him wherever he went. Toilet and bathroom was shared with the others in the camp and was down the hallway, they told him. Then they let him alone, let him settle in and get some sleep.
Never in his life had Soren slept better and heavier. This was really a nice place and the people were so nice to him it was almost unbelievable, he thought when he woke up and looked outside the window onto the deep dark pine forest surrounding the camp. Underneath his window was a huge courtyard where he saw people walking and talking, some were alone praying while holding a book out in front of them.
It was nice to know that he always had a place to turn, where friends would welcome him with open arms if he ever found himself in trouble again. He was beginning to think that this God-thing maybe wasn’t so bad after all. The love for your neighbor and the forgiving part, he really liked. Maybe he would look into it some more. If these people were representing God then he wanted God in his life as well. He wanted to be good like them, good to others, taking care of them.
So Soren Sejr stayed at the camp for a few more days than planned and studied the ways of the church members and was very impressed by the way they labored and worked for the community without complaining, without murmuring about the hard work. And they never expected anything from him. Not once did they tell him that he had to do anything. For the first time in his life no one bossed him around, no one told him what to do, no one asked him to take care of them like his girlfriend had done, like his parents had done before her. For the first time the heavy weight of responsibility was lifted off his shoulders. It filled him with relief and great peace at mind.
“Just enjoy yourself and let the love of God fill you,” they said.
So he did. He enjoyed the food, the friends, the beautiful surroundings and on his long walks through the forest where he often talked to God and asked him for direction, he never thought once that the high barbed-wired fence could be meant for anything else but keeping people out of the camp. It never occurred to him that it might be there to keep him and the others in.
After two months Soren Sejr thought it was time to move on. He had been living of their generosity long enough he told his new fri
ends. But now he was feeling great and ready to start over. He would never forget their hospitality and all they had done for him and if he ever could repay them, he would.
“Just let me know. You’re my friends and I really see you as my family.”
Anders Granlund whom Soren had learned to call the Priest like the rest did in the camp looked at him while shaking his head slowly, closing his eyes, exhaling deeply.
“Well here you go again leaving people,” he said. “Isn’t that what you always do, Soren? Leave the people you love? I know you’ve done it in the past, first your parents, next your girlfriend. Isn’t it about time you broke that pattern and stayed for once? We feel it is time for you to break those bad behavior patterns in your life and we’re here to help you.”
The Priest had looked to the other three from the leader-group that was present and they nodded in agreement.
“I don’t understand,” Soren said and looked from one face to the other of the camp leaders. He smiled and chuckled insecurely thinking it was like they didn’t understand what he was saying. He felt a little overwhelmed by their love for him, thinking they exaggerated slightly and acted a little overly dramatic. “I mean I will definitely be back to visit every now and then. I just think it’s time for me to get out and get a job and take care of myself for once. I think I’m ready to stand on my own two legs again.”