The Other Son (5 page)

Sophie noticed his low black shoes, worn and dirty, the socks that were too short, a length of pale shin exposed.

“What do they want?” he went on. Now he sounded like a schoolteacher trying to elicit a prepared answer.

“Everything, they want everything, I guess.”

Ignacio clapped his hands in a short round of applause.

“Yes,” he said, as if she had given the right answer. “They want everything.”

Ignacio leaned forward and whispered, “Now listen carefully, woman….We helped the Hankes to find Eduardo Garcia in Biarritz.”

The cold that washed over her cut into her.

“And I understand that you only just escaped with your lives in Istanbul the other week?” he went on.

She realized she was staring at Don Ignacio. He acknowledged her stare with a look of amusement.

He scratched the corner of his mouth with three fingers, still staring. “Do you understand what we're saying? Do you understand the process of this conversation, the language? Can you appreciate what we're saying? Is the picture clear to you?”

“Istanbul?” she whispered.

Ignacio nodded.

“Istanbul,” he said thoughtfully. “You were lucky there. It was you and Aron, wasn't it?”

“What do you mean, lucky? Were you involved?”

Ignacio shrugged.

“Not involved, but aware. We knew the plan.”

“What plan?”

“The Hankes have been looking for you, just as you have been looking for them. That was their best chance.”

She made it clear that she didn't understand.

Ignacio scratched the back of his neck.

“They were in control of the whole situation, right from the start,” he said, in a voice almost void of emotion.

“But we set up the deal, found Basir. The whole thing was arranged in absolute secrecy, only a few of us knew anything about it….”

“They have their tentacles everywhere,” he said.

She was trying to understand.

“And the purpose?”

“I don't know. They probably wanted to get Aron. But it didn't turn out that way….”

“ ‘Get'?”

“Yes.”

“And me?” she asked.

“You?” Ignacio wondered with amusement.

“I'm sitting here. What are you going to do with me?”

He pondered for a moment, then laughed.

“Good question…The Hankes obviously have a goal behind all this, they want to get rid of Hector and seize control of everything he's got, and we're helping them with that.”

He coughed, then went on. “Now, take this back home and explain it sensibly to Aron or whoever's making the decisions now. Come back with a constructive proposal that includes total capitulation. That's what you need to do.”

Ignacio Ramirez stood up, and Alfonse followed suit. They left the room.

The world outside
the window of the plane was pale blue to start with, endless and cold. Then it became dark and closed.

Ignacio was working with the Hankes, they had killed Hector's brother, Eduardo, wanted to get rid of Hector. And she was supposed to persuade Aron to fall to his knees and surrender everything they had. Which was never going to happen. Aron would fight to his dying breath; he was like that, down to his very marrow.

People would die.

She had to find another way, somehow.

Jens stood up in the cargo hold of an old Russian Antonov An-12 that was cruising west at an altitude of 8,000 meters.

The plane, around fifty years old, was being driven forward by four roaring Soviet turboprop engines. The noise level in the hold was unbearable.

In the good old days the Communists had managed to squeeze one hundred angry and fully equipped paratroopers into a machine like this. Now there was only Jens. He, and four crates of stolen goods lashed to the middle of the floor.

The crates belonged to an American Special Forces unit that had helped itself to some of the assets of the Ba'ath Party leadership during the first wave of the ground invasion of Iraq in 2003. Mostly gold and jewelry, art, museum artifacts, drugs, weapons, and an awful lot of cash. Everything had been packed up and buried in the desert east of Baghdad. Years had passed, the war had ended, and the time had come to dig up the treasure and get it out of the country. Jens had been contacted, and was given the job. He had gone to Baghdad, slinking around under constant fear of car bombs, and transferred the crates from one war to another: Afghanistan. There they had been buried once more. And more years had passed.

A month ago he received a call. The Special Forces unit had finished fighting, and wanted the goods back in the USA:
Take the goods to Mexico, we'll get them into the States from there.

A lamp flashed
on the wall of the cargo hold. The pilots wanted something. Jens made his way to the cockpit.

The captain and copilot were Georgian. Taciturn, proud, and constantly smoking hand-rolled cigarettes.

“We'll be landing in forty minutes,” the captain said. “Then we'll have four hours to unload, refuel. Then we leave.”

The Georgians would be heading home. Final destination: Batumi, on the Black Sea. Jens was going with them. He might get off somewhere en route, he didn't know yet. That was what his life was like, constantly on the move, a compulsive urge to keep going, to keep working, tempt fate, experience new things. But it wasn't as good as it used to be. He no longer gained the same satisfaction from it. The excitement didn't give him the same rush, and the life he had chosen as a smuggler had started to seem repetitive, uninteresting, even dull.

It shouldn't be like that. But that was how it felt, which made him feel rather sad. What was he going to do after this? Nothing could match the life he had lived over the past twenty years.

The copilot offered him a roll-up. Jens took it, even though he'd given up a while back. He lit the cigarette with the copilot's gold lighter, then slid into the glazed nose section.

It was pitch-black outside and the cigarette tasted of hay and caught angrily in his throat. The plane was lurching in the wind, the roar of the engines rose and fell, the paneling rattled and clattered, and the rivets creaked. But Jens was used to it, and trusted in God and a bit of goodwill to hold the plane together.

They had left Dushanbe two days before, crossing Turkmenistan and Turkey, then following a southwesterly arc across Africa, flying the last stretch on fumes before refueling and spending the night in western Algeria. Then an unsteady and turbulent flight across the Atlantic to Central America.

It was solid night outside. Jens rolled with the pitch of the plane and tried to see any landmarks but could make out nothing but the weak flash of the plane's navigation lights and clouds drifting past.

Eventually they approached the ground with all lights extinguished. He could see a few lights on the ground below them, but otherwise everything was dark. That was good. They were arriving without clearance—the plan was to come down on a landing strip without being noticed, then take off again.

The wheels unfolded from the body of the plane. There was a creaking, banging sound before they locked into position. The increased air resistance was noticeable as the machine forced its way forward with its engines roaring at top speed.

Jens could see the contours of the ground, mountains on either side etched against the dark sky, narrow roads, trees, small villages. Occasionally a few houses clustered together, vanishing quickly beneath him. The Mexican countryside, nothing more, nothing less.

The ground leveled out and the copilot opened the flaps to maximum. The air resistance increased still further and the plane seemed to just hang in midair. There was a makeshift barely lit landing strip beneath them. The Antonov tilted forward slightly. Suddenly it dived thirty meters and then leveled out again. The noise of the engines disappeared as the copilot eased off the gas. They hovered silently for a few seconds before the wheels hit the ground. There was a hard thud, then another brief, soundless period of flight before another thud, then gravity kicked in and held the plane to the ground. The machine raced across the uneven surface and the roaring sound came back as the pilot reversed the engines and the plane braked in a cloud of sand and dust. They came to a halt, slightly askew, and the engines were switched off. Silence, except for a whining tinnitus sound in Jens's head.

When the plane came to a halt, Jens crept out of the nose. The copilot was already standing by the loading ramp, and he pressed a button on the side of the plane. The entire rear section of the plane opened up like a massive jaw.

The air that streamed in was warm, soft, and dry.

Mexico, he'd never been to Mexico before….

The headlights of three vehicles approached along the landing strip. He glanced at his watch. The Americans were clearly early. Time to get going. Jens and the copilot loosened the straps from the large crates.

The vehicles stopped abruptly below the ramp. A gang of armed Mexicans in modern military uniform stormed into the plane. The copilot was hit first. Before he could come up with anything practical, Jens was struck on the cheek by the butt of a rifle, then again on the side of the head, and collapsed.

Leszek was driving. Sophie was sitting beside him in the passenger seat. They were heading out of Arlanda Airport, toward Stockholm. He was clutching a cell phone to his ear.

“I've just picked her up,” he said.

Sophie heard Aron's voice crackle quietly in Leszek's ear.

Would she lie to them now?…Or would she tell the truth? How Hanke and Ramirez collaborated to unreservedly force Hector down on his knees, once and for all.

Either way, truth or lie, the consequences would be enormous, in both directions. The truth would lead to prolonged violence and death, a scorched-earth strategy. The lie, on the other hand, would lead to more lies, procrastination, and her loneliness and powerlessness. Because who would she have on her side if she chose the lie? No one, absolutely no one. She'd be all alone.

Leszek angled the phone toward her.

“Off you go,” he told her.

Sophie watched the road ahead. Traveling fast to an unknown future.

“Sophie?” Leszek said.

She looked at him.

Did she even have a choice?

The lie…

“As expected,” she said in a slightly louder voice than usual.

Aron said something, and Leszek repeated it to Sophie: “What do they want?”

“For us to expand.”

Three people in the same conversation. Two speaking, one acting as a go-between. Aron thought that led to fewer misunderstandings.

“And what did you reply?” Leszek asked Sophie.

“That we'll hold back on that,” she replied.

“Did they accept that?”

“Yes.”

Aron asked Leszek a question.

“Just like that?” Leszek asked Sophie.

She nodded. “Yes.”

“The price?”

“The same.”

Aron's voice from the tiny speaker, Leszek mediating: “Why?”

“We got on well,” she lied.

Leszek listened, then asked Sophie a question: “Are they calm?”

“Yes, I think so,” she lied once more, looking out the side window.

Out-of-focus fir trees flashed past.

“Anything else?” Leszek asked.

“No,” she whispered.

Leszek and Aron exchanged a few quiet sentences, then Leszek ended the call and concentrated on driving down the motorway.

She sat there, staring at nothing, trying to maintain the relaxed air she hoped she was exuding. She would have to think twice about everything she said from now on.

“Angela and the children are on their way here with Hasani,” Leszek said. “They're going to stay with Daphne and Thierry until we know what's going on.”

Sophie saw a train running parallel to them, racing along the rails at the same speed as the car.

Leszek's tone changed. “Tomorrow?” he asked.

At first she didn't understand the question.

“Your schedule?” he clarified.

Her schedule, of course, the never-ending fucking schedule.

It was a daily routine with Leszek, the daily schedule, her schedule. The intrusive system of surveillance that he never let up on, which was utterly incompatible with any sort of private life. It was all about what she was going to do, where she was going to be and when, whom she was going to meet, and so on. Sometimes more general, sometimes tiresomely detailed. Every step she took was mapped and controlled by him. He made spot checks. Leszek could show up anywhere without warning, could suddenly call and check where she was and ask her to go to a location close to where she had said she would be.

It was stressful, but she had gotten used to it and didn't complain. She never complained.

Sophie kept her eyes on the world outside, nudging aside some hair that had fallen across her forehead.

“Home in the morning,” she said in a monotone. “Laundry, then driving Albert to his exercise class in the afternoon. Out to Daphne and Thierry, meet Angela and the boys.”

Sophie avoided herself
in the mirror, focusing instead on her shoes until the elevator stopped at her floor.

From the hall she could hear laughter from the living room. She put her bag down on the floor and went in.

Albert was sitting on the sofa with Anna on his lap. She was facing him, cooing, talking, and giggling as he tickled her. She stroked his hair and they kissed.

Anna felt Sophie's presence and quickly got off Albert's lap. The two youngsters tried to stifle a sense of embarrassment. Sophie laughed at Anna's peculiar posture as she stood there in the middle of the floor, not knowing where to go, and at the panicked smile that Albert often adopted whenever he felt uncomfortable.

“Hello,” Anna said with forced cheeriness to hide how awkward she felt.

Sophie chuckled, then went over and hugged first Anna, then Albert.

She unpacked in
her room, leaving the fake passport and her three phones in her handbag. Three phones, three numbers. One general phone for Sophie Brinkmann, open to everyone. The second had a number known only to a few people, mainly Leszek and Aron. The third was a simpler model, with ordinary buttons, a small screen, and no fancy features. She had been given that one by Jens. It hadn't rung in six months, but she carried it with her wherever she went. It lay there quietly in her handbag, fulfilling no function other than a sort of vague hope that it might one day make a noise. She looked at it every now and then.

Jens had gone away without saying goodbye, he just left, sending a bland text message. The days had turned into weeks, the weeks into months. She wanted to think he was weak, that he had let her down, but she couldn't. She just wished that bastard phone would ring.

Sophie showered, changed into jogging pants and a blue tennis top, then went into the kitchen. In the pantry she stared at the never-ending supply of homemade blackberry juice.

She poured some in the bottom of a glass, filled it with ice from the ice maker in the fridge door, then topped it up with water.

Albert and Anna were laughing again in the living room.

On the kitchen counter she prepared a pie crust. She pressed the crumbly dough into an ovenproof dish, forcing it up the sides.

Her options ran through her head….Ruin Hector's remaining businesses so there was nothing left for the Hankes to take? Could she do that? No…Talk to Leszek? Would he understand? No…Try to talk some sense into them? But who?…Contact all the groups she had visited over the past six months and persuade them to hand themselves over to the Hankes and Ignacio?…No.

There were no options.

Sophie started to cut some apples into pieces. Albert had liked apple pie as a child. These days it wasn't as delicious. But she clung to it so she could still feel like a mother.