into Birger Jarlsgatan and dropping down into Östermalmstorg station, where she took the tunnelbana to Södermalm.
* * *
—
Rebecka Forsell was sitting at her husband’s bedside at the Karolinska hospital when Blomkvist called again. She was just about to answer when Johannes made a sudden movement, as if he were having a nightmare, so she stroked his hair and let her mobile ring. Three soldiers were sitting outside the room, looking in at her through the glass in the door.
She was very conscious of being under surveillance. It intruded on her need to watch over him and she resented that. How could they treat them like this? They had even frisked Johannes’s mother. It was scandalous, and the worst was Klas Berg, head of Must, and of course also Svante Lindberg, who had claimed to be so goddamn sympathetic and upset.
He had come with chocolates and flowers and tears in his eyes, and he commiserated and hugged her. But he had not fooled her. He was sweating too much, and his eyes were darting back and forth. At least twice he asked if Johannes had said anything out on Sandön he needed to know about, and all she had wanted to do was scream: “What are you hiding from me?” But she said nothing. She just thanked him for his support, then told him she couldn’t face visitors and asked him to leave. He left reluctantly, and that was lucky because shortly afterwards Johannes came to, and told her he was sorry. His apology seemed sincere, and they talked briefly about their sons and how he was feeling, but when she asked, “Why, Johannes, why?” he gave no answer.
Perhaps he was not strong enough. Perhaps he simply wanted to escape from everything. Now he was asleep again, or just dozing. He looked anything but relaxed, however, and she took his hand. It was then that a text came through from Blomkvist. He apologized for disturbing her but said that they needed to talk, either on an encrypted line or face-to-face, in private. But she couldn’t, not now, and she looked in despair at her husband who was murmuring in his dreams.
* * *
—
Forsell was back on Everest. In his mind he was staggering ahead in the lashing snowstorm, it was cold and unbearable, and he could hardly think any longer. He just tramped on and could hear his crampons creak, and the thunder in the skies and the wide-open spaces. He wondered how much longer he could take it.
Often he was conscious only of his rasping breath in the oxygen mask and the indistinct shape of Lindberg next to him, and sometimes not even of that.
At times he was surrounded by darkness, maybe because in those moments he was walking with his eyes shut, and if there had been a precipice he would have stepped right into it and fallen without even a scream or a care. Then even the jet streams seemed to quiet. He was heading into a black and soundless oblivion, and yet not long before he had recalled his father standing by the ski tracks, yelling encouragement: There’s more in you, my boy. There’s more in you. For a long time, when fear had him in its claws, he had clung to those words. If you dug deep enough, there was always a little extra. But no longer.
Now there was nothing left, and he looked down at the snow swirling around his boots and thought that this might be the moment he would finally collapse, and that was when he heard the shouts, the wailing carried along by the winds, which at first sounded inhuman, as if the mountain itself were crying out its distress.
* * *
—
Johannes said something now, quite clearly, but Rebecka did not know if it was in his sleep or he was speaking to her.
“Can you hear?”
She heard only what she had been hearing all day, the roar from the highway outside, the hum of the hospital equipment and the steps and voices in the corridor, and she did not answer. She just wiped a drop of sweat from his forehead and straightened his hair. That made him open his eyes and she felt a sudden surge of hope and longing. Talk to me, she thought. Tell me what happened.
He looked at her with such fear in his eyes that it frightened her.
“Were you dreaming?” she said.
“It was those cries again.”
“Cries?”
“On Everest.”
In the past they had often discussed the events on