The Nemesis Program

  When the fire department came screeching onto the scene minutes later, all they found of Mandy Fiedel was a single smouldering shoe, flung into the middle of the street by the blast.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The evening was sparkling clear and bright as, after four and a half hours in the air plus a forty-five minute stopover to refuel at Thisted in Denmark, Ruth’s coordinates guided the ST-1 precisely in to touch down on the edge of Sweden’s Pieljekaise National Park. From above, the airfield was just a tiny dot lost in an endless sweeping vista of unspoilt forest. Even as Ben circled low on his landing approach, the place seemed dwarfed by the wilderness that surrounded it. A single winding thread of road was visible through the trees, leading to the nearest village half a kilometre or so away.

  Ben’s landing was smooth and even. The plane contacted the runway with a yelp, and he taxied off the main strip towards the hangars where a disparate collection of aircraft, including an old Swedish military transport plane that had been partially dismantled, stood around on the concrete. Powering down the engine, he stretched his stiff muscles and took off his radio headset.

  ‘Made it in one piece,’ Roberta said from the comfortable passenger lounge. ‘I’m more and more impressed, Hope.’

  ‘Now and then I even impress myself,’ he replied.

  They stepped down from the plane. The summer evening breeze had a bite of Nordic chill, and the air felt wonderfully fresh and clear. There was a prefabricated hut on the far side of the airstrip with a couple of vehicles parked outside, but unlike at Thisted where a dozen little guys in neatly-pressed overalls had come to greet the Steiner plane, nobody was in sight and nothing moved.

  Ben gazed around him at the forests and the mountains beyond, and instantly felt at home in this serene, empty place. He could live here, lose himself out there in that landscape, far away from everything where no person, no troubles, could ever find him.

  ‘It could be northern Canada,’ Roberta said. ‘So quiet. What do you suppose this Daniel Lund does? You think he’s some kind of weird recluse, maybe? I wonder how Claudine knew him.’

  ‘We’re not going to find out standing around here,’ Ben said, shouldering his bag. He pointed beyond the airfield gate, where the road disappeared into thick woods. ‘There’s a village a few minutes walk that way. We can get transport there.’

  ‘I doubt you’re going to find a Hertz rental place out here,’ Roberta said.

  Ben wasn’t surprised to discover that she was right. Half-hidden among the trees, the village consisted of just two or three narrow streets lined with wooden houses, a tiny church, a general store, a filling station and little else except a small log-built inn that looked like an Alpine chalet. In winter, the community was most likely cut off for months on end and accessible only by snowmobile or reindeer-powered sled. From the stacks of freshly-cut firewood in every yard it was clear that much of the summer was spent busily preparing for the next snowy season.

  A few faces turned to peer curiously around as Ben and Roberta walked into the inn, the downstairs of which obviously doubled as a bar for the locals. The owner was an amiable chubby-faced guy named Kristian who spoke some English. Ben ordered a double shot of whisky for himself, which he’d been secretly craving all the way from France. Roberta only wanted coffee.

  So what brought these good folks here, the smiling Kristian wanted to know as he served their drinks. Savouring his long first sip of whisky and the burn on his tongue, Ben explained that he and his wife – Roberta looked at him with a discreetly raised eyebrow at the mention of the word – had been hitch-hiking their way north from Stockholm, wanted to tour around the national parks of Lapland and were interested in hiring or buying a car locally. That generated intense debate among the clientèle, none of whom could ultimately suggest anything useful until Dolph introduced himself in faltering English. Dolph was a lorry driver with a load of fencing materials to transport north to Jäkkwik the following morning. His idea was that the pleasant foreign couple should be able to find something there, if they wanted to hitch a ride with him. Ben thanked him, and they arranged to meet outside the inn at eight.

  The locals went back to their conversations, leaving the two of them alone at the bar. ‘That’s that,’ Roberta sighed. ‘Nothing to do now but wait around and pass the time. I can’t say I’m sorry. I feel totally beat.’

  Ben’s head was hurting. He wanted a cigarette and could feel the tug of fatigue dragging him down too, but to add to his gloomy mood he was restless and frustrated that they couldn’t press on sooner with finding Daniel Lund. He ordered another whisky. ‘You need a nice room for the night?’ Kristian asked with a grin. ‘Dinner too? Hold on, I get menu for you. My wife is great cook.’

  They ate in a secluded little room in which they were the only diners. The menu was basic, but Kristian had been telling the truth about his wife’s cooking and the meat stew they chose was tasty, even though neither it nor the beers he washed it down with did much to restore Ben’s spirits.

  ‘So tell me about Jude,’ Roberta said out of a silence. ‘I have to say that surprised me, hearing you had a son.’

  ‘You weren’t the only one,’ he said.

  ‘You really had no idea?’

  ‘None, until a few months ago.’

  ‘Must have been quite a shock, I guess,’ Roberta said. ‘So how did … I mean, who was …?’

  ‘You want to dissect my ancient history now?’ Ben snapped; then, regretting the sharp tone in his voice, he softened and added, ‘Jude’s mother’s name was Michaela. I knew her at college. She died last year. So did Simeon, her husband.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Me too.’ He paused, gazing at his plate. ‘Sometimes it seems that most of the people I’ve cared about are dead, or gone.’

  Roberta reached across the table and brushed his hand lightly with her fingertips. ‘Anyway, Jude seems really nice. You must be proud of him.’

  ‘As long as he doesn’t take too much after his father,’ Ben said, ‘he’ll be fine.’

  ‘He could do a whole lot worse than take after you,’ Roberta said, to which Ben didn’t reply.

  After dinner, Kristian’s teen daughter Elin showed them up the creaky stairs to their room. The decor was old-fashioned and rustic, and everything was varnished wood: the walls, the ceiling, the frame of the large, soft-looking double bed.

  ‘Well, you were the one who told the guy we were married,’ Roberta said, sensing Ben’s discomfort. ‘What did you expect, twin beds?’

  ‘What was I supposed to tell him?’ Ben replied irritably. ‘The truth might be a bit much for folks to take. I’m not sure if even I believe it. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I told you, I’ve slept on a thousand floors. Once more isn’t going to kill me.’ Stepping around the side of the bed he yanked open a cupboard and saw that the room was well stocked with spare blankets. He hauled out an armful of them and carried them over to the far corner to make up his own makeshift bedding for the night.

  Roberta’s lip curled into a half-smile. ‘I’d invite you in with me again, but two nights in a row might look like I was trying something.’

  He dumped the blankets on the floor, started spreading them out with his foot, and made no reply. Roberta walked to the window and shut the drapes. This far north at this time of year, the sun didn’t set until midnight and darkness only lasted a couple of hours. ‘I’m getting ready for bed. Mind if I use the bathroom before you?’ She opened the door and peered inside the ensuite. ‘Well, I’m pleased to say it’s better than your one in Paris.’

  ‘Great,’ Ben muttered.

  ‘Then again, I suppose you don’t give a rat’s ass either way. You’re the big, tough military guy who’ll rough it any old how.’

  ‘Uh-huh. Whatever,’ he said, only half-listening. A thought had come to him and he’d started rummaging in his bag. His fingers closed on the familiar object and he pulled it out.

  His battered old steel whisky flask. It had
been around the world with him, soothed his soul in many a tense situation and even deflected a bullet or two for him. He shook it. Empty. That was something that had to be remedied right away, feeling the way he was.

  ‘Where are you going?’ she asked as he stepped towards the door.

  ‘Down to the bar for a refill. I’ll be back in a little while.’

  ‘I might be asleep by then.’

  ‘I’ll be quiet.’

  The guys down in the bar were fairly well lubricated after their evening session, and were rocking with hilarity over some joke Dolph had just finished telling. With his flask freshly filled a few minutes later, Ben crept back upstairs to the room and carefully opened the door without a sound. Only the bedside lamp was still lit. Roberta was under the covers with her hair spread out over the pillow and one arm outflung. She was wearing the same old shirt of his that she’d worn the night before. She looked cosy and at ease under the patchwork quilt. Pausing for a moment to gaze at her lying there, he suddenly realised that his dark cloud of gloom had lifted a little at the sight.

  ‘I thought you were sleeping,’ he murmured as she turned to smile at him.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘What’s funny?’ he asked, sitting on the edge of the bed.

  She rolled over to face him, raising her head from the pillow and propping it up. ‘I was just remembering how this happened to us before. You and me in a double room, having to act like we were a regular couple. Remember that little hotel in the Languedoc? How the only room they had was the honeymoon suite? And there was that strange old guy who brought us champagne?’ She chuckled. ‘I tried to teach you to dance that night, to a couple of those old Edith Piaf songs. You remember all that? It wasn’t really so long ago.’

  ‘I remember,’ Ben said.

  She gave a yawn. ‘And here we are again, just the two of us,’ she murmured. ‘Funny how life repeats itself. Why’d you suppose that is? You think in some weird way it was meant to happen, or something?’

  ‘Nothing is ever meant to happen,’ he said. ‘It just happens. You’re talking like a crazy person. Why don’t you put the light out and go to sleep?’

  She nodded drowsily, reached out an arm and clicked off the sidelight. The room was still only in half-darkness, with the pale light of the late Nordic sunset glowing in through the drapes. He could see the outline of her face and the gleam of her eyes watching him. ‘You going to bed too?’ she asked.

  ‘In a while,’ he said. ‘Thought I’d just sit in the chair for a bit.’

  ‘And drink.’ She’d noticed the flask in his hand. Her voice sounded suddenly less dopey.

  ‘If I want to,’ he replied.

  ‘You’re thinking about her, aren’t you?’

  Ben shrugged and didn’t say anything.

  ‘She’ll be there for you when you get back, Ben. You know that, right?’

  Ben still said nothing. He unscrewed the top of the flask and took a gulp.

  ‘That is, if we make it out of this alive,’ Roberta added, sounding wide awake now. ‘Which is far from certain, I guess. I wouldn’t bet on our chances. On that note, pass over the flask. I think I’ll join you.’

  Ben handed it to her. She took a sip, gave a splutter and thrust the flask back into his hands. ‘Holy shit, is that for human consumption or cleaning carburettors with?’

  ‘We could probably run the aircraft on it,’ Ben said.

  ‘Give me some more.’

  Ben reclined against the bed’s carved wooden headboard as they spent the next few minutes wordlessly passing the whisky back and forth. The sun’s glow was very slowly declining, inching the room into shadow.

  ‘It’s been a hell of a couple of days, hasn’t it?’ she murmured at last.

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘I wonder what tomorrow will bring.’

  ‘Try not to think too much about it,’ he said, closing his eyes. They felt too leaden to open again. He could sense his own voice getting slurry and his body relaxing into the soft bed as the deep, deep tiredness finally overcame him. Roberta went on talking softly, but he was beginning to drift and didn’t catch her words. He murmured something incoherent in reply.

  From somewhere on the fringe of his half-asleep senses, he felt a hand very tenderly caress his face. It felt nice, comforting, like being a child again. He felt an involuntary smile of contentment spread over his lips. The sensation continued on, and so did the voice, both nearby and faraway. The last thing he thought it said was, or might have been, something like: ‘If you can’t go back to her, Ben, you know you can always come back to me, anytime you wanted.’

  … Then he was gone.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  The sun had been up a long time when Ben awoke to find himself still on the bed, fully clothed, with Roberta’s hair tickling his face and her arm draped over his shoulder. Without waking her, he delicately lifted the arm off him and rose to peer out of the window. It was almost 7 a.m. and the village was coming to life.

  An hour later, true to his word despite the heavy night’s drinking, Dolph turned up outside in his delivery lorry and honked the horn. By then, Ben and Roberta were downstairs, revitalised with black coffee and waiting for him.

  As they clambered into the cab, Dolph greeted them with a grin and a thumbs-up, and the lorry rumbled off. The road was long and meandering, and carried them northwards through beautiful birch woods and over misty mountain passes. Along the way, Ben showed Dolph the address that had been on Claudine’s letter to Daniel, saying that this was an old friend he hadn’t seen in a long time and to whom he was thinking of paying a visit.

  ‘Your friend live in a hole in the ground, huh?’ Dolph asked, amused. When Ben asked what he meant, the lorry driver explained that the words ‘Hand om’ on the second line meant ‘care of’ in Swedish. The address was in fact that of the local post office, while it appeared that Herr Lund had none of his own, or at least none that he wanted to reveal.

  ‘No worry, I drop you right there,’ Dolph said, saying that their route passed through the place on the way to his delivery drop. ‘You find your friend, no problems.’

  The hamlet lay deep in the forests of the Pieljekaise National Park and centred on a cobbled square overlooked by a store, a tiny café and the quaint wooden post office to which Claudine’s letter had been sent. Dolph dropped them off in the square and waved cheerfully from his window as he rumbled off in a cloud of diesel smoke.

  The post office was completely quiet except for the ticking of a large wooden clock on the wall, and smelled of beeswax and brass polish. Standing at the old-fashioned counter, a skinny middle-aged woman with glasses on a chain around her neck and her steely hair scraped back into a bun was efficiently sorting piles of mail and other documents. There was no computer in sight. On the wall behind her were rows of neatly alphabetised pigeon-holes, some of them with letters and small packages inside. She looked up as Ben and Roberta walked in.

  ‘Best you handle this,’ Roberta whispered to him. ‘I have no idea what to say.’

  After establishing that she could understand English, and in fact prided herself on her ability to speak it, Ben told her that he was trying to make contact with an old friend, Herr Daniel Lund, who lived in these parts but for whom he only had this address. The postmistress assessed the two of them with a sharp eye. Ben’s face was open and earnest. Roberta leaned on the counter and smiled sweetly. Deciding the two foreigners could be trusted, the postmistress said, ‘Herr Lund come here in person to collect his mail each week. Where he live, it is too difficult for the deliveries to reach.’

  ‘Out in the sticks, eh? Dan always did like his privacy,’ Ben said, putting on a hearty smile. ‘Do you know how we might be able to find him?’

  The postmistress shook her head. ‘Jag vet inte. I do not know. But … one moment, please.’ Something seemed to have occurred to her. She turned away from the counter and ran a finger along the rows of pigeon-holes to the inlaid brass letter L.
There were a number of mailing envelopes inside. She drew them carefully out, checked them one by one and replaced them exactly as she’d found them. Then, looking thoughtful, she darted over to a half-open door, put her head through the gap and spoke a few words in Swedish. A man’s voice rumbled a casual reply from inside. The postmistress returned to the counter, looking pleased with herself. ‘You are in the luck,’ she said to Ben. ‘Herr Lund has post to collect and my husband thinks he comes here this afternoon.’

  ‘That’s great news,’ Ben said cheerfully. ‘It’s been so long since I’ve seen him. We were at college together. Tell me, does he still have the long hair and the beard? Everyone used to tease him about it.’

  The postmistress pointed to her chin. ‘A beard he had? And long hairs? No, no.’ She laughed. ‘You will see he has much changed, then. He is … how do you say? Nothing left here.’

  ‘Bald?’

  ‘Yes, yes, very bald, like a stone.’

  ‘Poor guy,’ Ben said. ‘I suppose time catches up with us all eventually. He must be forty, forty-two now.’

  ‘So young?’ the postmistress replied, looking shocked. ‘To me he seem older. Fifty? Or more. But the winters here in Lapland, they have bad effect on people.’

  After some more chatter, Ben and Roberta thanked her for her help and left the post office. ‘Nice work, Sherlock,’ Roberta said as they stepped outside into the fresh breeze. ‘What now?’

  Ben pointed across the street at the little café. ‘Now we sit tight and wait for a fifty-year-old bald guy to show up.’

  The café was as quiet as the post office, and they had their pick of the tables. The one they took was near enough to the window overlooking the square to be able to watch the post office entrance without being too easily spotted from outside.

  ‘Keep your eyes peeled,’ Ben said. ‘He’ll be dressed roughly, like someone living in deep country, and driving something with off-road capability.’