The Last Pilgrim Read Online Free Page B

could I have known? Holt thought. How could anyone have known, or even have suspected?
    Nordenstam blew a smoke ring toward the ceiling. The sound of the piano across the room competed with the constant stream of voices around them.
    “He asked you a question?” he said.
    Holt didn’t reply. He just stared at Nordenstam’s classic features, noting the hint of boyish optimism in his eyes, a look that suggested he was utterly unaffected by the innate evil in people. He had a sudden impulse to smash his handsome face with a sledgehammer, just to watch it dissolve into a mess of bone, blood, and brain matter, and then to dump the pulverized man on his wife’s doorstep, so that she would understand what had taken place on the other side of the border.
    Holt shook off the grotesque thought as a wave of nausea rose up in his throat. One of these days, he was going to lose his grip on reality for good.
    “Isn’t the food coming soon?” he said absently, as if they had never started this conversation.
    “I thought you were going to ask me questions, Kaj.” Nordenstam fixed his gaze on him. The piano player finished a number to muted applause from one of the tables, and a lively group yelled something in Swedish, which was followed by laughter.
    “Have you been to Spain?” Holt asked. “To Galicia?”
    Nordenstam shook his head, then smiled. “What’s this about, Kaj?”
    “I went to Lillehammer to get an answer to a question. I didn’t get it. But I was asked whether I knew the name of a town in Galicia, a town with a famous cathedral.”
    Nordenstam frowned. Either he was bored with this conversation or he was worried about what might come of it. Holt no longer cared.
    “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said.
    Holt pulled a pen out of his suit pocket. From the piano came the first notes of “The Jazz Boy,” a song that the Nazis back home had hated intensely. A smile formed almost imperceptibly on his lips as he wrote the words on a napkin. He carefully folded it up and pushed it slowly over to Nordenstam.
    “So,” said Holt. “I’d like to get an answer from Waldhorst about the thing with Gudbrand. I think he was the wrong man.”
    Nordenstam’s expression turned somber. It took him several seconds to gather his thoughts. Then he unfolded the napkin.
    “That may be some sort of answer,” said Holt. “Who goes to places like that?” He nodded toward the napkin that Nordenstam held in his hand.
    Nordenstam folded it up and stubbed out his half-smoked cigarette. He tried to meet Holt’s gaze, but Holt looked away. In the reflection of the windowpane, he saw Nordenstam put the napkin in the inside pocket of his suit coat.
    “What is this, Kaj?” he asked, a sympathetic look on his face. “What has got into you, my friend? Where is the Kaj I used to know? Are you letting a Gestapo officer pull your leg?”
    Holt didn’t reply, but instead let his gaze sweep the premises, only stopping when he noticed that one of the men in the lively party a couple of tables over looked familiar. Very familiar, in fact.
    No, he thought to himself. I can’t keep doing this. In his mind he could still hear Peter Waldhorst’s voice and see his brown eyes under those thick black eyebrows. Maybe it was just his imagination, a final dastardly trick from that condemned, conniving German. Holt felt like he could no longer tell what was true or false, as though he were on a carousel going round and round, surrounded by dead people. Agnes, Hvitosten, the young mother he had killed, Gudbrand—all spun in his head, almost driving him mad.
    “Let me get you a girl tonight, Kaj. What do you say? You need to relax a little.”
    He shook his head. For a second he wanted to grab Nordenstam by his lapels and shout, “Don’t you have any idea what Waldhorst was talking about?”
    “Where are you staying tonight?” Nordenstam asked.
    “At the apartment. On Rindögatan.”
    Nordenstam nodded as his eyes followed a