“How did you manage this?” Lukas asked as the driver put the car in gear and drove away.
“They know me here. We’re in for a long drive to Stockholm. Have something to eat and then try to get some sleep. We’ll be driving through the night.”
Not for the first time that day, Lukas wondered how he ever would have managed without Lozorius.
Lukas intended to stay awake, but once he had eaten, it became dark, the fantastically early night of the northern latitude. Then he drank some aquavit and fell asleep with the taste of caraway on his lips. It was a flavour very common in this part of Europe, one that reminded him of home.
Lukas spent the next eight days in an empty warehouse on the waterfront of Stockholm, writing reports about the political, economic and social conditions in Lithuania. Lozorius would take the papers he had written and disappear for hours, sometimes overnight, and then return with questions or requests for rewrites.
“Why is this taking so long?” Lukas asked.
“You arrived from terra incognita. They need to figure out the place you come from and what kind of animal you are and if they can trust you.”
“Couldn’t you just vouch for me?”
“It’s not so simple. They never trust anyone completely. And people change. The man you knew a year ago might be a different man today.”
“I haven’t changed. I’m still the son of a farmer.”
“Don’t pretend to be simpler than you are. You’re the one who took part in the seizure of Merkine. The one who shot down a whole tableful of dinner guests. The one who evaded capture for two years while others were dying or being taken prisoner, and then crossed the border successfully. You’re almost too good to be true.”
“What does that mean?”
“Just that you’re quite a prize. You even make me look good. I was getting a little stale for them.”
“Stale?”
“I’ve been here for a long time now. I haven’t had much new news since Lithuania’s been closed up tight. Just the odd letter was coming out before you appeared, and I couldn’t find a way back in. You’ve given me a new lease on life.”
The warehouse where Lukas lived was at least a hundred years old, all weathered red brick. He had a bed and a table in a corner of the vastness of the space. When he turned the light off, the interior was as dark as any bunker. He felt the vertiginous emptiness of the warehouse, whereas in the bunkers he had felt the oppressive closeness of the earth.
A small door led out to the street, with a canal on the other side of the road. Lukas could walk around all he wanted, but the city was a confusing arrangement of bridges and islands, a metropolis that stymied him. Twice he had become lost for well over an hour, wandering deep into the suburbs. He could not make himself understood to the locals when he asked for directions. He asked Lozorius to write down the warehouse address, and he tried showing this paper to pedestrians whenever he was lost, but he could never understand their explanations. Finally he lost the scrap of paper and reconciled himself to going astray each time he went out.
The city was old and unbombed, a novelty of preservation. Compared to Gdynia it was a museum, with charming old parks and cafés, picturesque in a storybook way. But it was also impenetrable. The people who walked the streets did not seem to have any problems, or at least no problems that showed on their faces. Lukas stared at them intently, as intently as he dared, but he could not see through their strangeness. On the fifth day he was caught staring at a young mother and she looked back at him angrily in a manner that made him understand he was the strange one, not they.
He had no money. There was no lack of food or drink back at the warehouse, and he found a new suit of clothes and a fresh pair of shoes laid out for him one day on his bed when he returned from a walk. Yet it felt odd to be unable to buy the simplest things, a coffee or a newspaper. Was he being sent a message? The shoes and suit fit perfectly, which was both comforting and a little disturbing.
On the eighth day he returned to find a man with steel-rimmed glasses and swept-back hair sitting at his table and smoking a cigarette. He seemed to be in his mid-thirties but could have been older. The man rose as soon as Lukas came in and extended his hand and addressed him in Lithuanian.
“Hello. My name is Zoly. Just my nickname, really, short for Pranas Zolynas. I hope I can call you by your first name?”
“Who are you?”
“A friend of Lozorius. Yours too, I hope, in the long run. We’re on the same side. I worked with the Lithuanian embassy here before the war, and the Swedes took me in after it was all over.”
“That was kind of them.”
“In a way, yes, but the Swedes don’t waste their kindness. Let’s not forget, the Swedes immediately recognized the incorporation of Lithuania into the Soviet Union and gave our embassy to the Reds. That wasn’t so kind. They put me out of a job in the first place. Since that time I’ve tried to be useful to the Swedes in small ways, and they are useful to me in return.”
“Where’s Lozorius?”
“Not in Sweden at the moment, I’m afraid.”
“What? He didn’t tell me he was going anywhere.” Lukas felt abandoned.
“He does that all the time. One is always happy to see Lozorius, but one should never expect him to be around for long. Like the Holy Spirit, he moves in mysterious ways.”
Zoly smiled and Lukas realized he had made a joke. Lukas was unaccustomed to this kind of playful talk except in the presence of women.
“But Lozorius gave me the reports you wrote, and I have to say I’m very impressed. The Swedes are interested. The West needs shaking up and the news of all those partisans still fighting almost three years after the war is just the thing.”
“Four years.”
“For you, yes, but here they don’t count the war as ending until May of 1945. If the Red Army killed you before that time, you were a German collaborator. What did you say you had—forty thousand partisans?”
“I said thirty thousand, and it was an estimate, and I don’t possess them personally.”
“Even if you’re only half right, that’s inspiring.”
“What’s going on? Why am I being held here?”
“Nobody expected you, and the Swedes are trying to figure out just what kind of fish Lozorius reeled in. Your reports are being translated into Swedish. Don’t worry, you’re on the verge of being figured out. In the meantime, I’m here to help you.”
“How?”
“In any way you like. Do you want to see a ballet? Go out for a few drinks and some female company?”
The offer sounded better than he cared to admit, but he didn’t dare to admit it, especially to himself.
“I’m on a mission to the West, not a pleasure trip.”
“Very serious, I see. Commendable. But you say ‘the West’ as if it were some kind of monolith. There is no such thing. There are the Swedes, the French, the English and the Americans, and they often don’t agree on matters among themselves.”
“So who should I be speaking to?”
“Well, the Swedes first, obviously, since that’s where you are.”
“And what’s taking them so long?”
“Long? You call this long? You haven’t been around government very much, my boy. They’re moving with lightning speed. With any luck you’ll be summoned sometime soon.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I don’t know. Ask me something else.”
Lukas had many questions. Were there any émigrés in Sweden that Lukas might know, people he could talk to? Some, it turned out, but Lukas should not mix with them yet. How big was Lozorius’s information bureau and how tightly was it connected to the Swedes? By the look of Zoly, very tightly indeed. What steps should he take to make his case to the Swedes? Follow Zoly’s instructions and wait.