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Lippman slid his cup to one side. His weak, melancholy expression had been replaced by fierce determination.
"That's an excellent idea," he said. "Naturally, a Swedish police officer goes to the Alps every winter to try his luck on the piste. What route are you travelling?"
"Via Sassnitz, then by car through the old East Germany."
"What's the name of your hotel?"
"I've no idea. I've never been to the Alps before."
"But you can ski?"
"Yes."
Lippman was deep in thought. Wallander beckoned the waitress and ordered a cup of coffee. Lippman shook his head absent-mindedly when Wallander asked him if he wanted any more tea. Eventually he removed his glasses and rubbed them carefully against the sleeve of his jacket.
"Going to the Alps is an excellent idea," he repeated. "But I need a bit of time to make the necessary arrangements. Tomorrow evening somebody will phone you and inform you which of the morning ferries you should take from Trelleborg. Whatever else you do, don't forget to put your skis on the roof rack. Pack everything as if you really were going to the Alps."
"How do you think I'm going to be able to enter Latvia?"
"You'll find out all you need to know on the ferry. Somebody will make contact with you. You will have to trust us."
"I can't guarantee that I'll accept your plan."
"There's no such thing as a guarantee in this world of ours, Mr Wallander. All I can do is promise that we shall do our best to excel ourselves. Perhaps we ought to pay and go now?"
They took leave of each other outside the pizzeria. The wind had come up and was squalling. Joseph Lippman bade him a hasty farewell before disappearing in the direction of the railway station. Wallander walked home through the deserted town, thinking over what Baiba Liepa had written.
The dogs are on her trail, he thought. She's scared and worried. The colonels have also caught on to the fact that the major must have left a testimony somewhere. It dawned on him that there was no time to lose. There was no longer any place for fear or second thoughts. He had to respond to her cry for help.
The next day he prepared for the journey.
Shordy after 6 p.m. a woman rang to say he'd been booked on to the ferry leaving Trelleborg at 5.30 a.m. the next morning. To Wallander's astonishment, she a
He went to bed at midnight. His last thought before going to sleep was how crazy the whole scheme was. He was on the point of getting involved voluntarily in something that was doomed to fail. At the same time, Baiba's cry for help was real, and he felt bound to answer it.
Early the next morning he drove onto the ferry in Trelleborg harbour. One of the passport officials waved to him and asked where he was going.
"To the Alps," Wallander told him.
"Sounds great."
"Does you good to get away occasionally." "That's what we all need to do." "I couldn't have kept going a single day longer." "Well, you can forget all about being a police officer for a few days."
"I will," Wallander said, but knew that was definitely not true. He was about to embark on his toughest assignment. An assignment that didn't even exist.
The dawn skies were grey. He went up on deck as the ferry pulled away. He shivered as he watched the open sea slowly grow as the ship moved further from land and the Swedish coast disappeared from view.
He was in the cafeteria having a bite to eat when a man in his 50s, with a ruddy face and shifty eyes, approached him and introduced himself as Preuss. Preuss had written instructions from Joseph Lippman, and a brand new identity that Wallander was to use from now on.
"Let's take a walk up on deck," Preuss suggested.
There was thick fog over the Baltic the day Wallander went back to Riga.
CHAPTER 15
The border was invisible.
It was there nevertheless, inside him, like a coil of barbed wire, just under his breast-bone. Kurt Wallander was scared. He would look back on the final steps he took on Lithuanian soil to the Latvian border as a crippling trek towards a country from where he would find himself shouting Dante's words: Abandon hope, all ye who enter here! Nobody returns from here – at least, no Swedish police officer will get out alive.
The night sky was filled with stars. Preuss had been with him from the moment he had made contact on board the Trelleborg ferry, and he didn't seem unmoved by what was in store. Through the darkness Wallander could hear that his breathing was fast and irregular.
"We must wait," Preuss whispered in his barely comprehensible German. "Warten, warten"
At first, Wallander had been furious at being supplied with a guide who didn't speak a word of English. He wondered what Joseph Lippman had been thinking of, assuming that a Swedish police officer, barely able to string together a few words of English, would be a German speaker. Wallander had come very close to calling the whole thing, which now appeared to be the triumph of wild fantasy over his own common sense, off. It seemed to him that the Latvians had been living in exile for too long and had lost all touch with reality. Twisted by grief, over-optimistic or just plain mad. How could this man Preuss, this ski
Nevertheless, something had made him keep going, and Preuss had sat beside him in the passenger seat, dozing all the time, while Wallander sped on following the directions Preuss gave him by pointing at a road atlas. They travelled eastwards through the former East Germany and by 5 p.m. were five kilometres short of the Polish border, where Wallander backed his car into a rickety barn next to a decaying farmhouse. The man who met them was yet another exiled Latvian, but he spoke good English. He promised that the car would be kept completely safe until Wallander returned. They waited until nightfall, then stumbled through a dense spruce forest until they reached the border, and crossed the first invisible line on the route to Riga. In a little town whose name Wallander quickly forgot, they were met by Janick, a man with a heavy cold, who picked them up in an old, rusty lorry. A bumpy, jerky ride over the Polish steppe ensued. Wallander caught the driver's cold, and longed for a decent meal and a bath, but all he was offered were cold pork chops and camp beds in freezing houses out in the Polish hinterland. Progress was slow. Generally they travelled at night or just before dawn. The rest of the time was passed in sleep or in uncomfortable silence. He tried to understand why Preuss was being so cautious. What had they to fear, as long as they were in
Poland? He was given no explanation. Preuss understood little of what Wallander was saying, and Janick hummed an English pop song from the war years, when he wasn't sniffing and snivelling and spreading germs in Wallander's direction. When they finally got to the Lithuanian border Wallander had started to hate "We'll meet again". He could just as easily have been somewhere in the heart of Russia as in Poland. Or Czechoslovakia, or Bulgaria. He had completely lost all sense of where Sweden was in relation to where they were. The lunacy of the whole undertaking became more obvious with every kilometre that the lorry took him deeper into the unknown. They travelled through Lithuania on a series of buses, none of which had any springs, and now, four whole days after Preuss had first contacted him on the ferry, they were close to the Latvian border, in the middle of a forest smelling strongly of resin.