O
laf Jansen?
O
utside, the snow had begun to fall heavily, and the wind whipped the cloud of white flakes against the windows of the captain’s suite. Sweeping clouds of whirling white covered the windowpanes, and the lounge became unmoored from all its ties to space and time. When Don tried to look out, all he saw was himself, reflected in the pale glass. How he was standing there with his back bent over the piles of paper on the writing desk, the attorney’s hazy figure behind him.
He avoided meeting Eva’s eyes as he walked back to the table and the Bunsen burner. He sank down into the sofa in front of Agusto Lytton’s empty easy chair.
The old man had prepared himself to go, and he was standing over by the doors out to the hall of the icebreaker with his fur over his shoulders. Then Don saw that Eva got Lytton to stop, and soon he heard a whispered conversation in Spanish. For a while he tried to hear what the conversation was about, but soon he zoned out, resigned.
He leaned his head against the cushions of the sofa, and in his memory, he returned to the pictures from the evening papers.
Olaf Jansen’s lifeless face was once again staring up at him from the stretcher at the opening of the mine shaft. Don wondered how he could have avoided noticing what now seemed so obvious. The arch of the temples, the cheekbones, the same chin … all these features that connected Olaf with Eva Strand. But the man in the mine had died in 1918, of course, and belonged to another time.
When Don looked up at the dim ceiling light of the suite again, he could hear that the whispering by the doors had stopped. Instead there was a clattering noise from the large drink cabinet. A few steps.
“I think you might need this, Don.”
He took the glass of vodka from Eva’s hand.
“Drink, now.”
D
on swallowed a few sips and laid his head back against the pillows again, and he studied the attorney from below. Now all he could see, in her face, was everything that reminded him of the dead man.
“So … Olaf Jansen. He must have been your … grandfather? Right?”
Eva looked at him for a long time, and then she said tonelessly, “No, Don. Olaf Jansen, he was my only brother.”
“But … how … ?”
Then the black-and-white photograph came flickering back. The blond woman sitting there with her modestly turned knees. In his memory, Don could see the caption shining up at him:
LYTTON ENTERPRISES—BOARD OF DIRECTORS—BUENOS AIRES 1936
“The last time I saw Olaf, I was only eleven years old,” Eva said.
“So you’ve met him?” said Don. “But didn’t he commit suicide down in the mine almost a hundred years ago?”
Eva nodded, and the corners of her mouth tightened. Don felt the nausea wash over him. He could no longer think clearly.
There was a creak from the easy chair as Agusto Lytton came and sat down. Then he sighed in Eva’s direction.
“
Su amigo tiene quince minutos.
Your friend can have fifteen minutes, no more. Then we must wake up the men and set the operation in motion. We’re already delayed, you know that.”
“The operation … ?” Don began, but Lytton interrupted:
“There’s quite a bit you’re wondering about, I imagine, Señor Titelman.”
The old man opened his silver case and took out another cigarillo. Tapped its tip against the glass table.
“I have promised my daughter I will give you fifteen minutes as a thank-you for all you’ve done. But as far as I’m concerned, even shorter than that would be best.”
“Your daughter?” said Don. “Eva?”
Agusto Lytton lit his cigarillo and nodded slightly. Don looked at Eva, then back at the old man, and felt himself sagging.
“Well, Señor Titelman?” said Lytton, after blowing another smoke ring.
In the silence, Don could hear Eva sitting down at his side. She took his arm and helped him sit up on the sofa again. Lytton drummed his fingers impatiently on the arm of the easy chair.
“Eva, what is the point in …”
A glance from her caused the old man to become silent. Then she helped Don take another few drops of vodka from his glass.
“So you …” Don tried.
Didn’t really know where he should start.
“So you’re Jansen? That Norwegian who once stole Strindberg’s star and ankh? Andrée’s murderer?”
Lytton stared without giving an answer.
“Father?” Eva’s urging voice.
“Yes, yes,” Lytton sighed. “Yes, it’s true, Señor Titelman. Once I was called Jansen. But in time, that name became … how should I put
it … ? A burden. I had to make a complete break from my past in order to keep my business going.”
“So why did you choose the name Lytton?”
The old man rolled his eyes.
“Señor Titelman, I urge you to think of the time. With every minute we are farther away from the opening that Strindberg’s ray has indicated.”
Don set his glass down on the table and fixed his eyes on it. He felt that he somehow had to find at least one point of focus.
“So in other words, you’re Olaf’s … So you claim to be the father of that dead man in the mine? The one who died in 1918?”
“Yes, but when it comes to my son I would prefer not to … That is a different matter, and I don’t know whether …”
Lytton looked at Eva, but she didn’t let him escape.
“Olaf, well …” Lytton began hesitantly. “I truly loved that boy. But it …”
His voice constricted unexpectedly. Lytton himself looked surprised.
“You promised,” Eva said harshly.
The old man took another drag from the cigarillo. Blinked in a cloud of yellow-gray smoke. Sat in silence for a minute, as though he were trying to collect himself.
“My Olaf …” Lytton tried again, in a whisper. “He was born at the end of the seventies. By the time he was a teenager, he had learned to handle the harpoon better than my father and me. We were whalers, three generations back. Can you understand what it feels like to work out at sea, along with your own son?”
Lytton’s eyes closed. His voice began to grow steady again.
“We had our ships at Lofoten and Svalbard. A modest little firm, and the business had just barely paid for itself. When my father died in the fall of ninety-five, there was almost no money left. The boy was only seventeen, so …”
“Ninety-five?” Don interrupted. “You’re talking about 1895?”
“Yes, yes, of course, 1895!” Lytton said, irritated.
“All these lies,” Don said, trying to gather the strength to get up.
“Señor Titelman?”
“You’re trying to get me to believe that you are well over one hundred fifty years old. I don’t understand why, but …”
Eva’s voice: “Just listen to what Father has to say, Don.”
“And you, Eva, that would make you about a hundred, right? I beg your pardon, but …” Don stood up, swaying. “It doesn’t seem particularly credible,” he said.
Eva took hold of his arm.
“In the twenties, Father’s chemists developed a method of slowing down the aging process. But it has proven to have a price, particularly for women. For me. The telomeres in DNA have bonds that …”
“As far as I’m concerned, we can just let this be,” Lytton interrupted. “What is the point of digging up old sorrows?”
Don bent back down to the table and picked up his empty vodka glass. Then he walked over to the drink cabinet and poured more. He took a few sips, and finally the temptation became too great to resist.
“In that case, Lytton, or Jansen, or whatever I should call you, I would really like to know what happened to Nils Strindberg, Knut Frænkel, and Engineer Andrée.”
The crash from a huge ice floe being crushed out in the darkness. Lytton looked questioningly at Eva, and after another sigh came the beginning of an answer.
“I was the one who convinced the boy that we should follow them when the Swedes’ balloon took off. It was about money; nothing has ever been about anything other than that.”
Don leaned against the drink cabinet. The vibrations from
Yamal
’s hull trembled up through his legs.
“We were not financially well-off, as I said,” Lytton continued. “Not just us; that went for everyone on Svalbard at that time. And of
course Andrée and his Swedes, with their German marks, needed all the help they could get. We took care of some of their shipments back and forth from Danskøya. My boy, Olaf, got to be close friends with Knut Frænkel during those weeks.
Admired
him, Señor Titelman. You know how boys can be. A few days before the expedition took off, Olaf heard the secret of the ankh and the star in confidence. The ray that pointed out … well, you know about all of that. When he told me about it, I immediately realized that the secret could be worth incomprehensible amounts of money. Even though the boy didn’t want to, I forced him to come along when we followed the balloon across the sea. It was Olaf and me and several of my closest men.”
Don was still holding the bottle of smooth Russian vodka.
Es macht nisht oys
, what did that matter? He unsteadily poured another glass. Took it with him back to the sofa and sank down.
“So was it you yourself or your son who murdered Engineer Andrée and Strindberg?”
“Murdered?” Lytton sneered. “You should really watch what you say.”
“Murdered, shot, executed? Which one fits best?”
Lytton threw a furious glance at Eva.
“Eva,
mí hija,
must I really … ?”
She nodded, and Don could hear that Lytton’s breathing was choked. After a glance at the clock, though, the South American chose to continue.
“Andrée’s hot air balloon was much faster than our steam-powered ship, of course, but we knew the winds and could predict which direction it would go. By the time the balloon came in over the pack ice it had already lost speed. We reached the ruined gondola on skis, barely twenty-four hours after the Swedes had taken off. From there we followed Andrée, Strindberg, and Frænkel’s tracks all the way to the opening of the tunnel.”
“And there … ?” Don asked.
“There … well, when we arrived it was completely empty—only the desolate ice, and in it there was a circular, gaping hole.”
“It was empty?”
“Well, maybe not exactly empty,” Lytton said, puffing on his cigarillo. “The Swedes had put up their tent before they went down into the tunnel itself, of course. Our plan was to find the ankh and star in their packs and then leave quickly. But when the Swedes suddenly returned … everything became so chaotic. Andrée was the first who realized what we were up to, and behind him came Strindberg and Frænkel. There was a snowstorm, just like tonight, and I don’t think even Andrée could see our faces through the storm. We tried to shout to the Swedes that we only wanted the ankh, but Andrée had already taken his rifle off. Then—it was so strange, because he suddenly grabbed his throat, and then he just collapsed. We never heard a shot, because it was so horribly windy. But when I turned around, Olaf was throwing down his rifle. The boy had happened to shoot Andrée in the throat—an accidental shot, Señor Titelman. He had only wanted to show them that we had weapons too, nothing more than that.”
D
on rubbed the crystal edge of the vodka glass. Once again he saw Eberlein’s black negative, in the library at Villa Lindarne. The falling snow, Andrée’s figure at the sharp-edged mouth of the hole.
“An accidental shot, you say. Does that go for Knut Frænkel and Nils Strindberg, too?”
Lytton squirmed, troubled.
“Yes, of course you know about Frænkel’s injuries, too. Well, Frænkel …”
“Father,” Eva said sternly.
Lytton looked away.
“I shot Knut Frænkel, Señor Titelman. I shot Knut Frænkel in the back when he and Nils Strindberg tried to run away.”
“In the back,” Don said skeptically. “Strindberg wrote that Frænkel was bleeding from the stomach.”
“The bullet went right through his body. In his back, out through Frænkel’s belly.”
Lytton leaned forward and placed the cigarillo in the ashtray on the glass table to go out on its own.
“But Nils Strindberg was stubborn. He managed to drag Frænkel all the way up to that crack in the ice. They must have managed to slide down along its walls, because we saw them moving in the dark, a hundred feet down. Olaf was crying and screaming that we should help them. But Frænkel was already a lost cause, and Strindberg would have reported us as soon as he got back to Svalbard. We would all have been hanged if I had let it happen.”
“So you just let them slowly freeze to death down there instead,” said Don.
He looked over at Eva, but her face was rigid, her eyes fastened on her hands in her lap.
“So what happened after you killed the Swedes?”
“Well, then …” Lytton mumbled. “Then we went down into the opening, and down there …”
The old man closed his eyes.
“Down there was a world that was impossible for us to understand. We were simple Norwegian sailors, Señor Titelman. It was … it was incomprehensible. But we did manage to figure out enough to realize that Strindberg’s star and ankh functioned as some sort of key to the underworld. And to see what that key was worth, we contacted the expedition’s German financiers through a proxy …”
Don was transported back to the SS hall in Wewelsburg, where he heard Eberlein’s words once again. The Norwegians’ demands to the foundation that they receive payment to open the tunnel down to the underworld.
“Not just
open,
” Lytton snorted. “Is that what the foundation wanted you to think? Maybe that’s how it was at first, but later the collaboration between us and the Germans became equal. And our own researchers were at least as successful as the foundation’s at
turning dim visions into new chemical compounds and useful military technology. Just the advances that Fritz Haber made …”
Don felt the nausea roll over him as he thought of the gas displays in Ypres, Camille Malraux,
Tué à l’ennemi.
Once again he saw, in the Frenchman’s dried mouth, the star that Olaf had placed there.
“If you were so successful,” Don muttered, “then why did your own son hide the star in a grave?”