Free When the Doves Disappeared by Sofi Oksanen

had needed so much help with his homework. He still remembered the boy’s expressions and gestures, his clumsiness with a fork, the bulky mitten tied to his left hand to stop him from using it in secret. They’d made up more than one song to tease him about it. It wasn’t absolutely necessary for Edgar to use his left hand, but the key to success was in the details. When he’d signed in at the hotel registry, he had even picked up the pen with his left hand first, then switched to his right and laughingly said something about old habits to the hotel clerk, and made a couple of jokes about left-handers for good measure, and when the porter brought him his freshly steam-pressed suit, Edgar gave him a generous tip with his left hand.
    Edgar licked bits of frosting from the fingers of his left hand and continued practicing in front of the mirror. He was starting to feel satisfied with his new self—he’d aged just the right amount in the past few years; he wasn’t a young pup anymore. One of the men who’d been with him on Staffan Island was already working in the office of the mayor of Tallinn, and several others were building their reputations in other countries. Edgar didn’t intend to settle for less. Quite the opposite.
    He practiced a little longer, then sat down at the desk and went through the papers he was planning to bring to German security policeheadquarters in Tõnismägi. Edgar’s list of communists who had written for the newspaper Noorte Hääl was perfect, and that had taken a bit of work. They’d found the bodies in the prisons and the cellars of the People’s Commissariat without any help from him, but SS-Untersturmführer Mentzel had been tremendously pleased with the information Edgar handed over about less obvious locations where the executed had been buried. And Edgar had already given Mentzel a catalogue of his former colleagues at the Commissariat for Internal Affairs back when they’d met in Helsinki.
    IT HAD BEEN at the Klaus Kurki Hotel, when Edgar was on leave from his training on Staffan Island, which was why he was nervous now, in spite of all his preparations. Although it was to be expected that the backgrounds of the men who trained at Staffan would come to light sooner or later, the appearance of the SS-Untersturmführer, who knew too much, thoroughly frightened him at first. But Mentzel had given his blessing to Edgar’s new, elegantly invented identity, and given his word that he would keep the matter to himself. They’d become fast friends, and Germany wouldn’t want to lose a good man. Edgar had been satisfied with that. He understood these sorts of transactions. Mentzel obviously thought the information he provided was useful, but still Edgar wondered what the man had in mind for him. He must have a plan of some sort, and Edgar didn’t know how long his supply of information would last.
    HIS NERVOUSNESS ABOUT making the salute properly proved needless. No one at headquarters burst out laughing, there wasn’t a trace of mockery on their faces. Mentzel waved Edgar to a chair across from an unknown Berliner in civilian clothes whose manner somehow indicated he had just arrived here in far-flung Ostland. Maybe it was the way he examined the office, and Edgar, or the way he settled into his chair as if he wasn’t sure that a place in the Dienststelle postal zone would even have proper office furniture.
    “It’s been quite a long time, Herr Fürst,” Mentzel said. “The Klaus Kurki was such a pleasant place.”
    “The pleasure was all mine,” Edgar answered.
    “I’ll get right to the point. We’re hoping for a solution to the Jewish question. We already have an abundance of material, of course, but you have more local knowledge. What’s your estimation of how conscious the Balts are of the dangers presented by the Jews here?”
    It was an awkward moment. Edgar’s mouth went dry. He’d prepared for the meeting all wrong, that was clear. He’d gone over numerous