Kalmann and the Sleeping Mountain by Joachim B. Schmidt

Author:Joachim B. Schmidt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bitter Lemon Press
Published: 2024-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

17

INTERROGATION

I fell silent, suddenly feeling exhausted, my mouth as dry as stockfish. The FBI agent, Dakota Leen, laid the pen down on her notebook and massaged the back of her neck, staring at me, staring right through me, seemingly far away, and that’s why I asked if she officially had to arrest me now, after everything I had told her. She shook her head and said that if it were up to her, I wouldn’t have been brought to the FBI headquarters in the first place. She sat up a little straighter but still seemed undecided, until Mr García popped his head into the interrogation room. “Leen. Outside!”

Her lips tightened and she threw me a meaningful glance, then got up in a leisurely way and walked out into the corridor, leaving the door open.

“I need you out there, right away!” I heard Mr García say.

“Okay, but…” Dakota Leen cleared her throat. “There are still a few things I need to clear up.”

“Are you done with the downser yet?”

“He’s not a downser, sir.”

“Does he have intel?”

“Lots. I’ve already passed it on.”

“Good. Book him and get kitted up! Full gear. We’ll take care of him later.”

As Dakota Leen sat back down in her chair, she made a face as though a thousand thoughts were racing around in her head. Eventually she took a deep breath and said: “Let’s get on with it. Names and addresses. It won’t take much longer.” She turned to the laptop and began typing before I had even said anything. “Can you spell your father’s name?”

“Q,” I said.

“Q?” She looked up.

“Q for Quentin,” I said, and Dakota Leen sighed. I couldn’t properly spell these American names for her. My mother’s name and my grandfather’s name I wrote on a piece of paper the FBI agent had torn from her notebook.

She typed the names, letter by letter, into the system. Then she froze and looked at me, dumbfounded, then back at the screen and back at me. “Óðinn Arnarson? This man here?” She turned the laptop around and showed me a picture of Grandfather.

“Yes, that’s him!” I cried happily. “But much, much younger.”

“Born in 1935?”

“And died last autumn,” I added, now no longer happy.

Dakota Leen turned the laptop back towards herself and typed in the year. She seemed amused and confused all at once. “Kalmann, your grandfather!” She held a hand over her mouth as she looked back at the screen. “Your grandfather is quite the individual. We have him in the system!”

“What kind of system?” I wanted to know.

“Well, actually it’s a list. A blacklist,” she explained, her mouth contorting.

“What’s a blacklist?” I asked the question softly, because I had a feeling I might not like the answer.

She hesitated, tilting her head from side to side until she found the right words. “A blacklist is a list of people who, let’s say, have done something stupid and have to be arrested if they ever set foot on American soil.”

“Arrested? But what did Grandfather do?”

Dakota Leen’s lips tightened again.

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