Exiles (26 page)

An automatic glass door slid open at their approach, and standing in the doorway was a small man in a tan summer suit. He had jet-black hair that fell across his forehead, nearly draping his deep-set eyes. It looked as if he had been wearing a wig that had slipped forward after a sudden stop. The man held his hand out to Spiegel and introduced himself as Inspector Svenson, detective division. His hand, in Spiegel’s tentative grip, felt like a toy. Svenson said something to the uniformed cop, thanking him, apparently, for the good work, and the cop released his grip on Spiegel’s arm. Svenson led Spiegel into the station.

Inside the doorway, on benches along the wall, sat three men wearing torn white shirts stained with sweat and dried blood. One was shaking with a death-rattle cold, his teeth chattering like hail on glass. Another, clutching a leaflet that he must have carried from the May Day march, was staring blankly into space, as though he were trying to discern, at some faraway vanishing point, the faint inscription of his fate. The third, his eyes sealed closed, folded his arms and rocked from side to side, as if in prayer.

“Sorry to lead you this way,” Svenson said. “We had to clear certain elements from the line of march. To keep it clean, you know. We let them cool down, then release them. Or take them to hospital.” Svenson guided Spiegel down a long hallway to a bank of elevators.

The elevator, shiny steel polished to a mirror finish, smelled of fresh oil. The smell of guns, Spiegel imagined. Yet the building looked much more like a corporate office than a police station. Spiegel had seen police stations back in the States, and had hoped never to see one again, at least from the prisoner’s perspective. He still had fixed in his memory a vision of shattered ceiling tiles, asbestos hanging from the heating pipes, cinder-block walls painted a dead-moss green, windows thick with protective wire, the glass brown from years of cigarette smoke, the floor an unfinished concrete, cold and rough, with a dark sewer drain set in the corner like an open wound.

But the room Spiegel found himself in now was entirely different from the holding cells where he had cowered in pain and terror until Iris managed to get the charges against him dropped. This room was like an office, perhaps a consulting room for a successful but nonostentatious therapist, furnished with a comfortable couch whose bolsters were covered in canvas ticking in bold floral patterns. Across from the couch were two chairs of Danish teak. Slouched in one of the chairs was the guy with the walrus mustache, whom Spiegel had last seen at the Penny Lane.

“They got you, too,” Spiegel said.

Svenson laughed, and said something in Swedish. Spiegel could see the man’s eyes crease and the fringes of his mustache lift slightly, like a stage curtain budged by a distant tug on the pulley cords.

“Oh, you’re a cop, right?” Spiegel said. “You’ve been fucking following me.” The man didn’t answer. Perhaps he didn’t understand English.

“Where’s his partner?” Spiegel asked Svenson.

“Pardon me?”

“Partner. The guy he was with, hair shaved down to spikes, tried to buy me a bottle of champagne. Bleated about how much he hated ‘Wiet-nam,’ until he passed out underneath a bar stool.”

“
Kan ni förstå?
” Svenson asked. Can you understand? The man shook his head.

“He works alone,” Svenson said to Spiegel. “You must have seen him on a case. Someone he was following when your paths crossed. Allow me to introduce you to Walter Brunius, special officer, Uppsala police.” Brunius held out his thick, paw-like hand. Brunius, how apt, Spiegel thought. A bear, with the face of a walrus.

“And you, of course, are Leonard Spiegel,” Svenson said. “The vanishing American.”

Spiegel said nothing. How long had they known? How long had they been on his tail? Well, there was nothing more to hide. The tail had caught the dog.

“
Var så god och sitt
,” Svenson said, the universal Swedish greeting. Please have a seat.

Spiegel sat on the sofa, sinking down into the pillows. A square of sunlight fell on the thick rya rug. Svenson went to the window and turned the cord that twisted shut the interior blinds.

The room dimmed, and it seemed suddenly cooler, as if someone had snapped a switch. Svenson closed the wooden door, and it locked behind him with a satisfying click.

“I haven’t done anything wrong,” Spiegel said, rather pathetically.

To speak to the men, he had to look up slightly, which made him uneasy. Spiegel realized that they knew this, intended it. They wanted him to be so comfortable that he became ill at ease and was at a disadvantage, like a guy in a polo shirt trying to get a car loan from a banker in gray flannels.

“Oh, we are not accusing you of anything,” Svenson said. “We would just like to have a . . . conversation. Would that be okay to ask?”

Spiegel didn’t answer. If he were at home, he would know his rights. He had learned them from Iris. Don’t say anything without the presence of your counsel. Here, who knew? Sweden was of course a liberal democracy, but Spiegel understood nothing about its system of justice. The Swedes might have all sorts of anachronistic practices. They had a king, after all. Maybe they still practice flogging, or beheading. The right thing to do, in most circumstances, would be to ask to see the American consul. Yet in Spiegel’s situation that might be the most dangerous thing he could do, for him, for Tracy, and of course for Aaronson.

“At least you should be grateful to us,” Svenson said. “We saved you from that mob, didn’t we? If we had not brought you here, well, I don’t know where you would be. Somewhere worse, no doubt.”

“Maybe, maybe not. At least I’d be free.”

“Oh, you are still free. We would not want to place you under arrest, and create—how do you say it?—an international incident. But we could make things difficult for you, if we wished. For example, we could ask you to produce your passport. That could be a problem for you, couldn’t it, Lenny? I would hate to have to ask, and to be forced to turn you over to the American authorities.”

“My passport was stolen,” Spiegel said.

“Was it? Has this been reported?”

Spiegel didn’t respond.

“Perhaps your American friend still has your passport?”

Spiegel held his peace.

“You don’t think so?”

“Why are you doing all the talking?” Spiegel asked Svenson. “Doesn’t Brunius speak English?”

“Only when drunk,” Svenson said. Brunius smiled. “But he does understand us rather well,” Svenson added.

“Yes, a little,” Brunius said. His voice was surprisingly high-pitched.

“Do you have my passport?” Spiegel asked.

“Of course not. We assume your friend still has it.”

“Aaronson?”

“Of course. Doesn’t he?”

“I don’t know,” Spiegel said. “I don’t even know where he’s gone.”

“Liar,” Brunius put in, and Spiegel knew why Brunius was there. The conversation with the elfin Svenson had been, or had seemed to be, civil, cordial, even amicable. But Brunius was all business. It would be difficult to put him off, impossible to lie to him. His eyes were tiny, like pebbles, beneath the eaves of his thick brow. His mouth was hidden behind the fringes of his drooping mustache. His face, as a result, was nearly devoid of expression, and the word had the sharp ring of a command.

“Is he drunk now?” Spiegel asked.

Svenson laughed, but Brunius just stared at Spiegel. Maybe he didn’t understand the quip.

“We all want to know where Aaronson is,” Spiegel said. “We haven’t heard from him since . . . several weeks.”

“Since he went to Germany.”

“I don’t know where he went.”

“Come on, Lenny, don’t give us the bullshit. You know he went to Germany. That’s why he brought you to Uppsala. To help with the exchange. Everybody knows this now. But the question is: Did he come back? Where is he? We know you are just trying to protect him, but as you can see, you are doing him no good, and you are putting yourself at great risk.”

“I’m not sure—”

“You don’t really know where he gets his money, do you?”

“He gets donations.” He and Iris had even sent a few bucks over, stuffed into a letter, shortly before he’d agreed to come to Uppsala.

Svenson barked out a little laugh. “Oh, yes. Donations. Your friend Aaronson has done a good job, since he arrived from— where was it? Canada?—attracting small funds to support your little group. American leftist sympathizers, French Communists, Italian anarchists—”

“A redundancy,” Spiegel put in.

“But would you say that was enough to support his way of life?”

“Sure. Why not?” Spiegel said. “He’s not into material things.”

“But did he seem to have a regular income, would you not say? A nicer flat than most of the other Americans? Money for a car? Enough to support a lady friend? A few extra kroner to spread out among the boys when they were, how do you say it, short?”

“None of the deserters is rich.”

“But he had enough to set him apart.”

“So what are you saying?” Spiegel asked.

“Has it ever occurred to you,” Svenson said, “that Aaronson is in the business of selling information?”

“You’re asking me if Aaronson is a spy? That’s ridiculous.”

“Believe me, it is not so ridiculous. We have seen it before. A nice fellow like Aaronson, a college student, in a moment of excitement does something stupid like he did to that draft office, and he finds himself on the run and far away from everything and everyone he ever knew, alone in a foreign land. He needs money. He has no idea where to turn when somebody approaches him— in a club, let’s say—and buys him a drink and tells him how much he hates the Vietnam War, how much he respects the American deserters. Do you follow me?”

“Yes, I think so,” Spiegel said cautiously.

“Good. Eventually, this man, let’s call him—”

“Igor,” Brunius put in.

“Igor convinces Aaronson that they can help each other. In return for regular contributions toward the welfare of the American community, Aaronson will make available to Igor certain facts. Not the kind of facts that could hurt anyone. Just the names of the other Americans, where they live, what they are planning, what they are doing, hoping, basic dossier material—”

“The Russians,” Brunius said. “It was Russian money.”

Spiegel looked at Brunius and read nothing in his eyes, his expression. He turned to Svenson for help in decoding this cryptic message.

“So what?” Spiegel said. “Why should you care where the money comes from? ARMS is a private organization.”

“Private, but with Soviet backing,” Svenson said.

“How do you know all this?”

“It’s his job,” Svenson said, nodding toward Brunius. And Spiegel understood that the man he had seen with Brunius was not a drunk, belligerent Finn but some sort of Soviet agent.

“Okay,” Spiegel said. “Say I believe you.” Brunius snorted, and Svenson smiled benignly, his eyes bright beneath the fringe of hair, like diamonds hidden in dark straw. What an unlikely policeman, Spiegel thought. What an unlikely Swede.

“Why not just let the ARMS movement take its course and get its money from whatever country offers to help?” Spiegel said. “God knows Sweden hasn’t offered much.”

“Because we are not the only ones who have been tracking the Soviet money,” Svenson said. “We have reason to believe that the American military police, the criminal-intelligence division, as they call it, has been watching the banking transactions of your group. We understand that they intend to encourage Aaronson to expose the ARMS group as a Soviet cell. They will use him like a lever to pop the lid off the whole antiwar movement. And beneath the lid, what will they see? A swarm of maggots. Everything will be revealed—how deserters are recruited, how they are smuggled north, who pays for their life support—with the obvious political consequences.”

That’s possible, Spiegel thought. He had heard that the military police had been trying to infiltrate the deserter groups in Stockholm, to get some of the brothers to denounce others, to stir up a climate of hate and distrust, to make the deserters look selfish and cowardly in the eyes of the world. If they could depict the Uppsala group as a tool of the Soviets, it would discredit the antiwar movement in America and become a powerful political symbol for the hawks on the right, at home and in Sweden as well.

“You mean the deserters would not be welcomed home if the American public knew they had been nourished on a diet of rubles,” Spiegel said.

Svenson waved his hand dismissively. “The politics of America is of no consequence to me. My concern is for the political stability of Sweden. If the ARMS group is tied to the Soviets, the SFP would surely use that issue as—how do you say it?—a platform. Certainly they would try to turn the country against foreigners, against Americans.”

“The Sweden First Party?”

“Yes, the ones who appeared with you on that television show. They have been watching you very carefully.”

“But, I mean, they’re so out on the fringe they’re barely in the picture,” Spiegel said. “I can’t believe you take a threat from them seriously.”

“They are small, but deadly serious. And with a break like this, they could grow, win some seats in the parliament, maybe even claim a cabinet post. All they need is for Aaronson to talk.”

“Aaronson will never talk.”

“You may be right. But they would like to hand someone over to the American authorities.”

“You’re suggesting . . .”

“You. If they can’t find Aaronson, they will deliver you. That’s why we were hoping that you could lead us to your friend. Unless you want him to take his chances on his own.”

“I’ve told you the truth, though,” Spiegel said. “I don’t know where Aaronson is.”

“That is a shame,” said Svenson. “We were going to offer to help, if you could lead us to him.”

“Help with what? I don’t need help.”

“Maybe Aaronson does. We could offer him some protection.”

“From who? From what?”

“From the charges he would face: espionage, treason. Those are serious matters, when your country is at war.”

Spiegel looked from Svenson to Brunius and back, the one so volatile and intense, the other so phlegmatic and still, his heavy features set as if his face were carved in stone. How could he trust them? Were they truly hoping to protect Aaronson, or were they plotting to do away with him and then to smash ARMS apart. Perhaps, Spiegel thought, they are just angling to get into position for the perfect shot: Spiegel would betray Aaronson, reveal his own true identity, and then he and Aaronson, Tracy and all, would be knocked off the table and dropped out of sight.