Twenty-Two

For the first time since his months in Malmö as a sixteen-year-old under the thumb of the “German swine,” Slobodan experienced great anxiety.

The physical sensation itself was unpleasant, it radiated out from a point level with his navel. He was even more disturbed when he discovered what the discomfort actually consisted of: pure and unadulterated terror.

This was a feeling that, ever since he had tamed the Malmö restauranteur, he reserved for others. That was the time he had discovered the power of terror. The freshly sharpened fillet knife stuck into the man’s abdomen, only two or three centimeters deep but enough for the blood to start trickling down onto the tile floor and bring fear to the German’s eyes.

The knowledge that he was on his own from now on drove him beside himself. There was only one Armas, who was now lying naked in a refrigerated storage facility. And Slobodan was powerless. When he realized that the police were searching Armas’s apartment he immediately started thinking of a counterstrike, but to his surprise he could not think of one. He was in the hands of the police.

He was not particularly concerned that the police was going to find any evidence of their activities in the apartment. Armas was smarter than that. But despite his well-developed concern for security and care, there was a risk. A telephone number hastily scribbled down on a newspaper, a name in an address book, or something else that could point the police in a certain direction.

Slobodan thought intensely about whether he had any incriminating material in his own apartment or at the restaurants, but could not think of anything. He realized that the police were not going to overlook any areas in their search for Armas’s killer. Even he himself would be examined. He had gathered as much from the female police officer’s questions.

He immediately started to work his way through his phone book, flipping through the notes he had made, searched all his desk drawers. Then he stood there for a long time, sweating and staring into space, scouring his mind for anything that could threaten his freedom.

At Dakar or Alhambra there was less of a danger, for there Armas had been in charge. Slobodan knew no one who was as careful as Armas. Now he had fallen victim to someone. To seize him was an almost inhuman assignment, but someone had outsmarted him.

He thought about the last thing they had done together, updating the computer. Had Armas sensed that something was afoot? Did he feel threatened? Hadn’t he said something about “gaps” that needed to be filled? Had he meant Rosenberg? Armas had long been irritated over Rosenberg’s indulgent lifestyle. Admittedly he had improved since Armas had worked him over, but Slobodan knew that if he could choose they would cut out Rosenberg.

“His kind only understand one language,” Armas had said.

Insecurity came creeping. Perhaps Armas had concealed something from him? Slobodan rejected the idea. Armas had been his friend, his only friend. They were incapable of betraying each other.

What was it Lorenzo had said of Armas? “Multifaceted.” They knew each other from their youth. “Youth,” what kind of nonsense was that? It was a foreign word when it came to Armas. He had never talked about his youth or childhood. Slobodan’s impression was that Armas had never been young. And was this Lorenzo likely to know things about Armas that he himself didn’t know? Multifaceted? What the hell did that mean?

Slobodan paced around the apartment. Circles of sweat appeared under his arms. The pain in his chest, that had come and gone over the past year, grew into a pressure that made him draw deeply for a breath.

Suddenly the phone rang. It is Armas, he thought for a second. Not many people called Slobodan at home: Armas, Oskar Hammer, occasionally Donald at Dakar, and then a couple of others.

He let it ring. Against his will he had a grappa. He forced himself to down the stinging liquid in an attempt to regain his focus.

“This is not fair,” he muttered, and it was not Armas’s fate that he was thinking of, but the failed delivery in San Sebastián. It was lost, he realized, there was no plan B. And it would be completely insane to think of an alternative at this point.

He turned on the laptop, eyed the e-mails that remained, and decided to erase all of them. A great deal of information would be lost—he did not know how he would be able to save the innocuous files—but his anxiety about what might be concealed in the inner regions of the computer made it into a threat.

After finishing his grappa he called a cab and left the apartment with his computer bag.

Once he was out in the fresh air he felt better. The knot in his stomach died away and he watched with satisfaction as a taxi pulled up, almost somewhat astonished that everything worked as before.

He ordered the driver to take him to the dump in Libro. He had been out there with Armas before and thrown away old papers and garbage from the restaurants. He asked the taxi to wait, made sure no one was watching, banged the laptop into the side of the container a few times before he wedged it in between an old filing cabinet and a mess of metal scraps.

He exhaled and stood stock still. Out of the corner of his eye he saw an attendant approaching. If you complain about something I’ll kill you, he thought, but the man only looked indifferently at him with weary eyes.

Slobodan returned to the cab with the empty computer bag and asked to be dropped off at Alhambra. While he sank back into the seat, exhausted, he wondered if he should call Rosenberg but decided to hold off. That’s what Armas would have done, he thought, and realized suddenly with great sadness how much he was going to miss him.