You give and you get.
He liked the tables with the red-and-white checked tablecloths, welldone pieces of tender meat, salads that tasted fresh. He even liked the bustling waiter who could sniff out tips. But most of all, he liked the openplan design that made it easy to see who was coming and going, when you should lower your voice without it appearing to be evasive.
Norman Hill was about fifteen years older than him. A nice, softly spoken gentleman who seemed to have been born to this. The sort of person who was pointed out in primary school as a potential senator. He was thin, even thinner than Finnigan remembered, and several times he was about to ask if he was ill but refrained; Hill’s eyes and face radiated the same energy that he always did, he was the kind of man you listened to, had confidence in. Authority, Edward Finnigan thought to himself, had nothing to do with physical weight.
At some point in the middle of their conversation, Finnigan started to smile. For the first time since Vernon Eriksen’s visit, he relaxed, felt his shoulders fall, the tension around the back of his neck let go. There was something so familiar about all this, secure even. They had sat like this eighteen years ago, in another restaurant a couple of hundred yards away, and Finnigan had appealed to him to apply political pressure that would result in media pressure—back then it involved a seventeen-year-old boy who had taken the life of a schoolgirl a year younger than him—to stoke public opinion in support of the severest legal penalty, even though the murderer was a minor. Senator Hill had then pressed all the buttons he could: ones that Finnigan had heard about and ones that you got to know only when your whole world was the blocks between the Potomac and Pennsylvania Avenue.
Edward Finnigan actually didn’t need to say much. He ate his pink beef and drank the beer with a European label while Hill picked at a Caesar salad and ordered more mineral water. Finnigan had prepared a long speech on the plane about maintaining confidence in the American legal system, about the party’s credibility, about a continued focus on the death penalty as a deterrent and preventative measure. It wasn’t necessary. It didn’t take more than a couple of minutes for him to recount the tale of John Meyer Frey’s death and resurrection. Norman Hill had interrupted him, a thin hand in the air and then those eyes. Not even the promise of a favor in return. The slight senator had thanked him for the lunch, held Finnigan’s hand in both of his, and said that he didn’t need to worry about all this.
Twenty-five minutes later, he ordered two double espressos at the Starbucks farther down Pennsylvania Avenue. The congresswoman was named Jane Ketterer and she had aged with dignity. Edward Finnigan didn’t remember ever thinking that she was beautiful before, but he did now. When she smiled he felt the desire that Alice had rejected, he wanted to hold her and touch the skin under her long skirt, but he was there to talk about the same thing he just had, and she listened and nodded and was indignant. He desired her even more when they emptied their coffee cups and parted a while later, leaving the place with a few minutes between them.
He took a taxi to Mr. Henry’s. It was on the same street, but there was quite a distance between numbers 237 and 601. He had once some years earlier walked the whole length of Pennsylvania Avenue and he would never do it again, he had been considerably younger, but his black shoes had rubbed his feet raw in several places and it had still been painful to walk a week later.
Mr. Henry’s was one of the few bars in Washington that he always went back to. Hushed conversations, a bartender who didn’t try to be funny, it was discreet, away from the louts who wanted cheap beer and to get drunk quick.
Jonathan Apanovitch was much younger than he was, he guessed no more than forty. He was tall and fair with eyes that resembled Norman Hill’s and he had worked as a journalist for the
Washington Post
for nearly half his life. Edward Finnigan had done a quick count while he waited; this was the twelfth time they had met here over the years and they were both happy with their agreement. Finnigan had a channel for the information he wanted to plant and Apanovitch strengthened his position as an investigative journalist with a nose for news.
This time the story was so good that Finnigan drew it out for as long as he could; he knew that what he felt was absurd, but it was real and he accepted it, his daughter’s death, the greatest loss of his life, was for a while a triumph, something that made his knowledge desirable, perhaps the only way to cope with it.
He gave Apanovitch the names of two people that he knew would be able to comment on his story, a senator called Norman Hill and a congresswoman called Jane Ketterer.
He had one condition. It had to happen fast. The story about an American who was due to be executed and had managed to escape from Death Row by faking his own death and was now alive and being held in a European prison had to be published the following day.
You give and you get.
Jonathan Apanovitch thanked him for the beer that he hadn’t finished and then disappeared out toward the car that he had parked, as agreed, a block away.
IT WAS LATE AND THE CLOCK ON THE CHURCH THAT HE COULDN’T REMEMBER
the name of in Gamla Stan struck twelve. The red building that housed the government offices emerged from the dark as he got closer. Thorulf Winge had walked for the second time that day from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to Rosenbad. The afternoon and the greater part of the evening had passed since he had been given fifteen minutes in the prime minister’s office to explain why John Meyer Frey would, in a few hours’ time, have to be deported out of the country, to the other side of the border.
He was cold. The expensive coat over his suit gave no more protection than paper. It was a long time since the sun had gone down and the beautiful clear night spread cold like an aggressive cancer, constantly dividing in order to reach farther and drain people of energy until they fell; minus seventeen was more than he could stand.
The older man who recognized him had gone home and a young woman was now sitting in the security post. Winge had never seen her before, nor she him. He showed his ID and she checked his details on the computer screen, followed up by a phone call, and he had drummed his fingers on the metal strip for a bit too long when she finally opened the big glass door and he could go in.
In the course of the allotted fifteen minutes, Thorulf Winge had got both the minister of foreign affairs and the prime minister to accept that it was reasonable to extradite Frey in line with the requests submitted by the American ambassador and direct from Washington. All three had agreed that a little shit who murdered young girls and kicked Finnish ferry passengers in the face should under no circumstances be allowed to jeopardize the good relations that had been nurtured with great care since Prime Minister Palme’s day; following his vociferous contempt for the Americans in Vietnam, the Swedish government had slowly, step by step, developed an entente with the only superpower that was left, and to aggravate this relationship for a prisoner who had been convicted of murder was not in the interests of their political work, nor the political visions of either party.
He had got them to understand
why
.
But not how.
He had asked for more time and had finally been given it once the fully booked day was over, which in this case was twenty past midnight in the dark between a freezing cold Thursday and Friday.
There was a thermos of coffee on the table, another of tea, a couple of bottles of mineral water, and in the middle some cans of a fizzy drink that tasted like Coke. They were all used to long days, to the constant need to have ready-made answers on all sorts of issues and to be questioned if there was even the slightest doubt, to be put under a magnifying glass when answers were not foolproof and to expect calls for their resignation when they made an error of judgment. They were tired, wanted to go home, but the matter at hand had to be resolved by dawn.
Thorulf Winge poured a cup of tea for the minister of foreign affairs and the prime minister and a black coffee for himself; he had long since given up the idea of sleeping before the night was over.
It was a beautiful room with a high ceiling, exclusively Swedishdesigned furniture, spacious, airy, even the lighting was pleasant. It struck Winge that you would appreciate that only when your eyes were tired from a day of too much and too harsh light.
He looked at the men, each sitting on a generous wooden chair covered in soft red fabric, silk perhaps, he wasn’t sure, something that would be delightful against your cheek should you decide to lean your head on it.
There wasn’t time for chitchat. They knew why they were there.
And they looked at Winge, so he started to speak.
“This is going to be published in the
Washington Post
tomorrow.”
He had copied and enlarged the fax he had received an hour earlier. Part of an article that would dominate the front page of the newspaper in America’s capital. He put two copies down on the table, one in front of each of the ministers.
“The reporter, someone called Apanovitch, sent this to us asking if someone could comment.”
Both men fumbled with hard black spectacle cases, the paper copies rustled in their hands as they read carefully and in silence. A story about an American citizen who had been sentenced to death and who, several years after dying in his cell on Death Row, was now very much alive and being held in custody in a Swedish jail. A background about Frey’s crime and judgment, two photographs, one of a boy in a courtroom wearing orange prison overalls, one of a considerably older man, short hair, thin, taken in a photo booth, glued into a false Canadian passport. Then a correct description of events, that he was suspected of aggravated assault and had been arrested four days ago by the Swedish police, taken into custody, and presented for pre-trial proceedings in the Swedish capital. Apanovitch referred to several anonymous sources and closed with indignant comments from a Senator Hill and Congresswoman Ketterer.
Winge studied both his colleagues as they read. Overweight, gray hair, suits that were both expensive and elegant, but never quite fitted properly. He had known them since they were young men. They had met and worked together in the party’s youth organization, they trusted each other and they had made decisions in private together before.
“Describe Hill.”
Senator Norman Hill had chosen formulations that were clear and unimpeachable. He led the reader to understand that a country that was barely visible on the map would not be permitted to obstruct the American legal system’s right to impose the death penalty, but he said it in different words, eloquent and experienced, balancing diplomacy outward with authority on the home front.
Winge looked at his ultimate boss.
“Hill is sixty-eight years old. He has been a senator for a good number of these years. He has political responsibility, is the unofficial campaign manager for the Republicans’ presidential candidate in the upcoming election. He stays well in the background but is generally recognized to be one of the most influential people in the party.”
Car horns blared somewhere in the distance, someone shouted something, sounds outside the window that were muffled by the wind and cold. The Stockholm night was as alive as it always was, people moving around in a capital that gave them space. The location of the government offices, in the city in amongst all the bars and homeless people and tourists, was symbolic, power in the midst of life, but also ironic; out there someone was getting drunk on cheap wine and pissing against the walls, in here the most powerful people in the country sat and decided between life and death.
Thorulf Winge poured himself some more black coffee, held the thermos up and looked questioningly at the others, who shook their heads.
He took a sip and turned to his bosses. He wanted to continue, raise the bar.
“They’re not going to give in. We can decide to resolve it now. Or, we can draw out the process, get egg on our faces, and
then
still be forced into the same solution. They’ve already got the lethal injection in their hand.”
The minister of foreign affairs ran his hands through his gray hair, as he often did, always when he was thinking, when he felt pressured.
“Political suicide.”
“The ambassador and Washington have both pointed out that Sweden is obligated to extradite suspected criminals to the States, that is, insofar as they are not Swedish citizens. And Frey is American, even if he has been declared dead.”
“Political suicide. If it becomes public knowledge.”
Winge was waiting for a response from the prime minister, who had chosen to remain silent until now. They had both been in Luxembourg a few years ago and taken part in the negotiations between the EU member states and the United States regarding a new extradition agreement between the two centers of power. An initiative proposed by the American government following the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. Now he stood up, took off his glasses, hung his jacket over the back of the chair covered in soft red fabric.
“Thorulf, we were both there. And we both remember the issues, don’t we? I certainly remember that, on your advice, I smiled when I spoke about our concern that there should be sufficient guarantees that those who are extradited would be given a fair trial and would
never
be sentenced to death.”
“I also recall the discussion.
It is incontrovertible that any EU member state will refuse to extradite someone who is at risk of being sentenced to death.
But don’t you understand? We won’t be doing that. John Meyer Frey does not
risk
being sentenced to death. He
is already
sentenced to death.”
The prime minister was a tall man, and when he stood under the chandelier, the glittering cut glass hung like a hat over his sweating brow.
His tired eyes roamed the room, he put a nervous hand to his nose, smacked his lips without being aware of it.