The Last Pilgrim Read Online Free Page A

German intelligence operatives had managed to make it over the border just a few days before everything fell apart for the Germans. Nordenstam seemed to be afraid that Holt might ask him the obvious question: Where were they now? Had anyone here helped them? Put them on a ship to Portugal or Spain or even farther afield, to countries whose names he scarcely knew?
    The war, Kaj Holt thought. It had been less than a month since the liberation, and he still awoke each morning thinking that the war was still on. He still carried a cyanide capsule in his jacket pocket, the little Colt Llama in a garter around his calf beneath his wide trouser legs, and a silencer in his coat pocket, in case he ever woke up to the sound of boots at his door. Yes, he thought. This war will never end. As he carefully wiped his mouth with the napkin—real linen—he recalled how during the war he had always felt guilty when he was here at the Cecil, in this beautiful city. He had been overwhelmed by those damned feelings of guilt every time he had made it across the border to Stockholm, where he was given new orders and enjoyed a couple of weeks’ R & R. Because he knew that when he went back across the border, he’d be met with the news that yet another of his best friends had been killed. He felt guilty because he’d survived the longest years in Norway’s history. Some people said that the greatest honor in war was to survive, but now, a few weeks after the liberation, Holt thought that such talk sounded false. There was only one honor in war, and that was to die , the way so many had died. They had all been better human beings than he was, with real lives to return to. But here he sat, the survivor. And what had he used his freedom for but to leave everything behind, including his wife and child?
    Did I really just leave? he wondered. He stared distractedly at his own hand. A big scar ran across it—almost white among the stiff black hairs—and he was suddenly unable to remember how he had gotten it. For a few seconds he felt as though nothing bad had happened, not the war, nothing at all. Then the thought of Agnes struck him like a bolt of lightning. So young, far too young. If only he’d been able to save Agnes, the war would at least have had a scrap of meaning. And it was all his fault. To think that he could have been so infinitely blind, so boundlessly naïve.
    Holt’s musings were interrupted by Nordenstam’s voice, and the Swede’s hand gripped his arm lightly.
    “What is it?” he said, leaning across the table. “Kaj. Look at me.”
    “Waldhorst,” said Holt.
    “Peter Waldhorst?” Nordenstam said in a low voice.
    Holt nodded, more to himself than in answer to the question. He should have responded to the fact that Nordenstam clearly knew who Peter Waldhorst was, but he didn’t bother. He was no longer surprised at all the information the Swedes had acquired.
    Holt averted his gaze and turned to look out the window at the brunette again. She was strolling happy and carefree down the street, arm in arm with her girlfriend. Nordenstam took a cigarette from the silver case he always carried in his inside pocket, tapped it lightly on the lid, and lit it. Holt watched him surreptitiously. Nordenstam was a true friend of Norway, far more so than his superior at the Swedish military intelligence organization, the C-Bureau, whom he was going to meet tomorrow. For an instant Holt wished that he himself were Swedish. How much easier it would be to carry on after the war, raising a few pigs in the forest or some such thing.
    Nordenstam held out the open cigarette case to Holt.
    “Peter Waldhorst . . . what about him?” he asked as he lit Holt’s cigarette.
    “Oh, nothing really. He’s locked up in Jørstadmoen. I paid him a visit and he . . . asked me a question.”
    For a second Holt thought he might have revealed too much. But no, there was no reason to hold back. Nordenstam would understand, if anyone would. And how