The Exception Read online

  They talk together for a while longer, speaking into the darkness. Then someone outside the hut calls to Omoro.

  When he has left, Cathy stirs. ‘You’re good at this, Iben.’

  ‘Thank you. It’s harder with the rest of them. I think Omoro and I get along well because we sat together in the truck’s cab.’ Iben feels worn out. She lies down before speaking again. ‘It can only be to everyone’s advantage if I manage to get along with at least some of them.’

  Cathy lies very still. She is silent.

  Then, a long time later, Cathy whispers half to herself: ‘I could try to do the same thing. Usually I’m better at it than this.’

  ‘Are you still feeling ill?’

  ‘Yes. No. The diarrhoea seems to have stopped, but I’m … Oh, maybe it’s just because I’m so scared.’

  Roberto and Mark must be listening.

  ‘What about the other two? How are you?’

  Nobody responds, except Cathy. ‘Mark is having a very hard time. Mark?’

  A deep sigh tells them that Mark has heard them. Cathy turns to put her hand on his forehead. He whispers ‘No’ and she takes it away.

  Iben lifts the small oil lamp and holds it close to Roberto’s face. ‘Roberto, how are you?’

  He looks bad. She asks again, but he says nothing.

  She feels a cold sweat breaking over her skin. She strokes his cheek. No reaction. She becomes aware of her heart thumping as she bends over him and gently pulls back one of his eyelids. His eye has rolled up in its socket so that only the white part is visible.

  ‘Roberto!’

  Cathy’s voice is hoarse. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘I don’t know. He’s gone limp. He seems to be unconscious. Oh, God. He’s fucking unconscious. What should we do?’

  Iben moves to the doorway. She pulls the cloth back and speaks as authoritatively as she can manage. ‘We need a doctor!’

  The guard outside the door is new to Iben. She keeps repeating her request. ‘We need a doctor! Quickly!’

  After a while the guard calls another man. He calls out again and soon several men are milling about outside the hut.

  The older man who conducted the service turns up. He goes inside to examine Roberto. When he comes out he looks worried and speaks at length in Dhuluo. Dalmas Phillip has joined the group now. The two older men discuss the situation.

  Odhiambo explains to Iben: ‘Ochieng will help your friend.’

  So Ochieng is the name of the other old man.

  ‘But Roberto needs a proper medical doctor!’

  More discussion. It is quite clear that Dalmas Phillip is the man who makes the decisions. As he pronounces his judgement in Dhuluo, he watches Iben with calculated indifference.

  Odhiambo interprets. ‘He says that your friend will not be seen by a white doctor. It is not possible. But Ochieng will help him.’

  Iben easily picks up that Odhiambo doesn’t think much of Ochieng’s skills.

  Iben turns to Phillip. His smell fills her nose. ‘It is very important that the sick man is seen by someone who can give him penicillin. And some medicine for cholera.’

  She tries to catch Omoro’s eyes, but can’t see him in the group. Then she spots him. He has hurried away from the others and is walking swiftly towards a group of trees outside the perimeter of the site.

  She has lost her chance. She is no longer the favourite prisoner. Now she is the one who has stuck her neck out farther than anyone else.

  She meets Phillip’s eyes.

  He speaks English now. ‘It will be as I say.’ He falls silent.

  There’s something about him, about his eyes, scarred skin and short, grey hair. A fast sequence of the things he has done to Nubian women is running through Iben’s head. There is nothing more she can say.

  She discovers that she doesn’t dare meet his eyes again or even look in his direction. Instead, she sinks down on her haunches and waits. She doesn’t move until one of the men says something, which she assumes must mean that she is to go back inside the hut. She obeys, unable to fight for Roberto any longer.

  Mark and Cathy have heard everything, but they don’t say a word. Iben can’t be sure if there’s not a small part of them that’s happy she’s the one taking risks.

  On her way to sit down she touches Roberto; he seems lifeless. Cathy has rolled him over on his side in the recovery position.

  A little later Ochieng comes in. He makes Roberto inhale the vapour from a steaming brew of herbs, but seems to know perfectly well that he can’t cure him and that the treatment he is offering is only for show.

  The night is cold and Iben shivers in her flimsy clothes. It’s so pointless for Roberto to die this way, only a few metres away from where she is trying to find enough peace to sleep. I must try to do something to help Roberto. I must try. But she knows that she will not.

  Cathy and Mark just lie there, quietly.

  Should I move alongside Roberto to warm him with my body? She thinks of how she avoided sharing her warmth with him while he was still conscious. She felt awkward about sleeping with her arms around her sick boss. But now everything has changed – it is not feeling awkward that gives her pause, but the thought of waking up during the night embracing a corpse.

  After a little while she moves over to Roberto and makes the others come too, so that all four of them can keep each other warm. She dreams that she’s back in the office. Malene, Camilla and Anne-Lise are hysterical because there is a trail of blood across the floor where someone has dragged a dead body. Somehow Iben knows that the blood is Ojiji’s. Other things happen that she can’t recall afterwards.

  The night feels so long that only remembering the dream proves to Iben that she has slept at all. When the gaps around the curtain become lighter, Roberto is still alive.

  They are relieved, but Mark has become quite strange, almost aggressive. He moves clumsily back to his own space, bumps into the others and pushes them hard enough for it to hurt. Iben doubts that he is ill but doesn’t dare question him about it.

  She can hear the men getting together for their morning service. Should she sing with them again? Should she go outside? If she goes outside, showing anger wouldn’t make it harder for them to kill her. The choice is between staying in the hut to demonstrate how unforgivable she finds their treatment of Roberto, or joining them, which goes against every natural instinct.

  She thinks to herself: If I do go out there it might persuade them to let a doctor see Roberto.

  Iben sings along with the hymns and again adds her own solo verses. Then, for the first time in over twenty-four hours, she hears Mark’s voice. He speaks quietly. ‘Shut up, why don’t you.’

  ‘Mark!’ Cathy sounds upset.

  Mark continues: ‘Iben, you won’t gain a thing by sucking up to them. Not these guys.’

  Iben carries on singing regardless. This morning they haven’t sent a guard to bring her outside. She gets up and, keeping an eye on Mark, tries to get out through the door. The guard says something incomprehensible, shoves her back inside and pulls the cloth back in place.

  Iben has no tears left. All three lie still and listen.

  Then Cathy speaks. ‘Iben. You’re a survivor.’

  This time there are fewer voices in the choir. Some of the men must have left, setting out early in the morning. Iben manages to pick out seven voices.

  No one comes in with a morning meal. Iben is dozing when she is alerted by the sound of running feet. Four shots ring out. Men are shouting in Swahili.

  Then nothing.

  All is quiet again.

  Iben peeps through the doorway. Militiamen are walking from hut to hut, investigating each one. Their uniforms are different from anything Iben has seen before, neither police nor army. Someone must have dispatched a special unit to free the hostages. There are about twenty of them. She can’t work out who is the leader until the soldiers haul two Luos from a hut and push them down on the ground in front of a man with glasses. He add
resses the Luos and then turns away to give the soldiers new orders.

  The guard in front of their hut has disappeared. Iben stands in the doorway and peeps round the cloth, but she doesn’t go out. At the far end of the encampment eight unarmed Luos are standing in a line.

  Now Cathy and Mark have joined Iben and stick their heads around the other side of the curtain.

  Some of the soldiers march the Luos along to the biggest hut and shove them roughly inside. Omoro is among these eight men.

  His eyes widen when he sees Iben. He calls to her: ‘Iben! Iben!’

  Silence.

  The leader of the special unit walks towards the hostages. He is smiling. ‘Everything in order?’

  Iben finds it hard to look at him and hard to concentrate on what he’s saying. She hears gurgling noises from the big hut. Maybe she replies something to his question. Afterwards she can’t recall.

  The soldiers come out again. They haven’t been in there long. Their clothes and hands look clean but Iben notices the tops of their shoes where the leather is stained red.

  None of the hostage-takers emerges from the big hut.

  35

  Iben cannot figure out what Paul is up to.

  Just after Gunnar left DCGI, Paul told her to drop her work on Chechnya for the next issue of Genocide News and concentrate on Turkey instead. She has no problem with that – except that Paul is also insisting that Anne-Lise is to be her co-editor.

  That’s simply too much. Anne-Lise has never done anything journalistic, never written or edited anything. She is sure to run to Paul every time she can’t grasp one of Iben’s decisions, with the likely result that she’ll ruin Iben’s relationship with Paul and, in the long run, with the board as well.

  After the meeting Anne-Lise said she had a headache and went home – something to be grateful for at least. Now Iben has twenty-four hours to get over her annoyance before her new teammate returns.

  Paul has closed the door to his office, so there’s no need to escape to the kitchen for a discussion with Malene. Camilla can hear what they’re saying, but it doesn’t matter. Malene acts distant and uninterested. Obviously she is still displeased about Iben voicing her opinion of Gunnar earlier.

  After chatting for a while, Malene says she’ll pop down and get something nice for their afternoon coffee. She takes her bag with her, which means that the trip is just a cover for her to talk to Gunnar on her mobile.

  When Malene returns, she has spoken with Gunnar, as predicted.

  ‘He’s really annoyed. During the meeting here, Gunnar realised that Paul didn’t have a mandate from the board as he’d said he did. It didn’t take long for Gunnar to figure out that Paul was trying to use him in some internal power struggle.’ Malene looks at Iben, not acknowledging that she was right about Gunnar after all. ‘He turned down Paul’s offer of a seat on the board.’

  When Iben gets home that evening she tries not to think about the project with Anne-Lise. She checks her email and answering machine, and wonders for the umpteenth time if it would be right to phone Gunnar.

  She slices a handful of vegetables, pours olive oil on top and adds some spices. After microwaving the mixture she eats it with pieces of crisp-bread while watching TV. She could say that she wants to hear Gunnar’s thoughts on the meeting today. She’s just a dedicated employee, nothing wrong with that, is there? That’s what she could tell Malene, if she asks her.

  Standing next to the heavy, wine-coloured armchair she inherited from her grandmother, she dials his number. He answers the phone.

  ‘Gunnar, I hope this isn’t a bad time?’

  ‘No. Not at all. It’s good to hear from you.’

  But Iben doesn’t learn much about the meeting because Gunnar says that he’s in a hurry, he’s on his way out.

  Iben feels suddenly deflated. But then she thinks it’s just as well to know that he’s not interested in her. No need for any more rows with Malene.

  Gunnar explains that he has promised an old friend to go to a showing of the friend’s documentary about a development project in Uganda. The film-maker is going to give a brief talk about his work and afterwards the audience will join in a debate about both the film and the project. Would Iben like to come along?

  The answer seems to stick in her throat. One of her hands is scratching at the back of the old armchair, her body tense. She feels a familiar shiver, almost like fear. She covers the mouthpiece and breathes a huge sigh. No criminal this time, but she looks around her all the same.

  They agree to meet in half an hour at the Nørrebro Street office of the development organisation Ibis. When Iben arrives, Gunnar is waiting for her. He looks happy to see her and introduces her to his friend.

  The noise of the crowd milling around in the lecture theatre is quite different from the earnest atmosphere of the DCGI. The aid activists, and the audience in general, are colourfully dressed, talk in loud voices, laugh and call out greetings to people they last met on field projects abroad. Almost everyone is tanned.

  A few older men wander about, working the crowd. Like Gunnar, these men seem to have many friends and acquaintances in the audience, the majority of whom are young, female and often strikingly attractive. Three women chatting near a window catch sight of Gunnar and wave. He looks delighted and waves back.

  Iben keeps wondering how many of these people have slept with each other. In a hut in Zimbabwe, for instance, or in a shack in El Salvador. Or in someone’s flat, late one night after a party. It follows that some of them might have been with Gunnar. She can’t let go of that thought either. She regrets putting on a prim, cream-coloured blouse, which had seemed so perfect. Still, she can’t think what else she might have chosen to wear.

  Gunnar introduces her to another ‘old friend’ even though she looks quite young. The woman leans into Gunnar as they talk. Iben can’t figure out why this girl’s turquoise dress is somehow provocative, given that it is high-necked and not at all figure-hugging.

  Fortunately Iben hits it off with many of the people she meets. They still remember her from the media coverage six months ago – a Kenyan hostage crisis is especially likely to stick in the minds of Africa activists, of course.

  Gunnar has reserved two good seats in the middle of the theatre. After a very brief lecture, the film starts up.

  Iben and Gunnar are sitting side by side in the dark on the hard wooden seats. They do not touch. Iben leaves one hand resting on her thigh. It’s the hand closest to him, only a few centimetres away. Her hand senses the warmth of his body, but neither of them moves. Even the air between them is still.

  When the film ends, four people carrying glasses of water and writing pads sit down at a couple of tables at one end of the room. They are introduced as ‘the panel this evening’. Twice they refer questions to Gunnar, saying, ‘Gunnar, you know all about this issue.’ Gunnar’s answers are lucid and well-delivered. He doesn’t exploit the opportunity and avoids sounding overly academic. He comes across so well that Iben half-suspects that he had it in mind when he invited her here. It makes her happy to think her opinion might matter to him.

  Afterwards, in the throng of people, Gunnar invites her to the nearby Café Sebastopol. Outside in the night air Iben and Gunnar walk, pushing their bicycles along as they chat about the film. Once inside the café Iben tries to be relaxed but also to maintain a slight distance. Strictly speaking, this isn’t a date, she tells herself, and she is definitely not trying to seduce her best friend’s would-be lover.

  They talk a little about Gunnar’s meeting with Paul that morning. When Gunnar and Paul said goodbye, Paul put his left hand over their clasped hands and told him that he would keep Gunnar ‘informed whenever the situation opened up’. Iben and Gunnar have a good laugh about this.

  They talk about literature too. Gunnar subscribes to Granta. It turns out that they’ve both read Botho Strauss. Gunnar smiles at a quote that Iben happens to recall: ‘The silent man, who was sitting at the cleared table in the feeble
light of the projector, leaned on his forearms with his body suspended like a heavy, wet dress from between his shoulders.’

  Gunnar has read several of her articles in Genocide News and they talk for a while about the high-ranking Nazis who simulated mental illness in the run-up to the Nuremberg trials. Gunnar tells a story about Karl Dönitz, first commander of the German submarine fleet, later commander-in-chief of the entire navy and Hitler’s successor for the final period of the war. Dönitz used to wander around in prison with his head hung low, making a kind of engine noise. When asked what he was doing, he answered that he was a submarine. It didn’t wash, of course. No one was taken in by his performance as a lunatic. They both laugh at the image of the commander rumbling around in the prison yard. Gunnar’s hand rests on the table very close to Iben’s.

  At her front door, Iben fumbles with her bicycle keys. When she tries to shift the bicycle sideways, a pedal hits the knife fastened to her leg. For the first time, it strikes her that she has forgotten about her fear of being ambushed by a professional killer.

  Hurriedly she looks up and down the dark road. Far away a broad-shouldered man is standing, looking in her direction.

  As she runs up the stairs, thoughts of Gunnar still absorb her. Malene can’t simply keep him for herself. She can’t have him on stand-by, just in case Rasmus packs his bags one day. He’s too old for Malene, she said so herself. But it would be catastrophic for Iben to have to work so closely with Malene if they were no longer great friends.

  She can’t fall asleep right away. So she switches on the television in her bedroom and piles up cushions to lean against in bed. Then she goes to the kitchen for marshmallows and a few spoonfuls of ice cream.

  Just as she is coming back to the bedroom the phone rings. She runs to the sitting room and notices that she has several messages on the machine.

  Malene is on the phone. ‘Where have you been? I’ve been calling you all evening!’ She is obviously very upset.

  Out of habit, Iben thinks it must be Malene’s arthritis, only Malene doesn’t sound as subdued as she usually does during an attack. Then it hits her. Iben has an eerie feeling that she knows what Malene is about to say.