The Troubled Man (2011) kw-10

by Henning Mankell

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘South.’

  ‘Far?’

  ‘A hundred and twenty miles or so, maybe a bit more. But there’s no hurry.’

  They drove out of Stockholm and set out on the motorway.

  ‘What’s in store for us?’ Nordlander asked.

  ‘You’ll just have to listen to a conversation, that’s all.’

  Nordlander asked no questions. Does he know where we’re going? Wallander wondered. Is he only pretending to be surprised? Wallander wasn’t sure. Deep down, of course, there was a reason why he had taken his guns with him. I brought them because I can’t be sure that I won’t have to defend myself, he thought. I just hope it won’t be necessary.

  They reached the harbour at about ten o’clock. Wallander had insisted on a long stop in Soderkoping, where they ate dinner. They sat in silence, contemplating the river that flowed through the town and admiring all the plants and bushes coming into bloom on its banks. The boat Wallander had reserved was waiting for them in the inner dock.

  By about eleven they were approaching their destination. Wallander switched off the engine and allowed the boat to drift in to land. He listened. Not a sound to be heard. Sten Nordlander’s face was almost invisible in the darkness.

  Then they stepped ashore.

  40

  They moved cautiously through the late-summer darkness. Wallander had whispered to Nordlander that he should stay close to him, without giving any explanation. The moment they arrived at the island, Wallander felt quite certain that Sten Nordlander didn’t know anything about Hakan von Enke’s hideaway. It would have been impossible for anybody to conceal so skilfully any knowledge about where they might find the man they were looking for.

  Wallander paused when he saw the light from one of the windows in the hunting lodge. He could also hear the sound of music above the sighing of the waves. It took several seconds before he realised that a window was open. He turned to Sten Nordlander and whispered, ‘You find it hard to believe that Louise von Enke was a spy?’

  ‘Do you find that odd?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘I hear what you’re saying, but I refuse to believe that it’s true.’

  ‘You’re absolutely right,’ said Wallander slowly. ‘What I’m telling you is what they want us to believe.’

  Nordlander shook his head.

  ‘Now you’ve lost me.’

  ‘There were items in Louise’s handbag indicating that she was a spy. But those things could have been planted there after she was dead. Whoever killed her also tried to make it look like a suicide. When I met Hakan here on the island he told me in minute detail how he had suspected for many years that Louise was a spy. It sounded very convincing. But then I began to understand what I had overlooked earlier. You might say that I held up a mirror and observed all the events in reverse.’

  ‘And what did you see?’

  ‘Something that turned everything upside down. What is it they say? You have to stand things on their head in order to see them the right way up? That’s how it was for me, in any case.’

  ‘Are you saying that Louise wasn’t a spy after all, then? If not, what are you saying?’

  Wallander didn’t answer his question.

  ‘I want you to sneak up to the house wall,’ he said. ‘Stand there, and listen in.’

  ‘To what?’

  ‘To the conversation I’m going to have with Hakan von Enke.’

  ‘But why all this pussyfooting around in the darkness?’

  ‘If he knows you’re here, he may not tell the truth.’

  Nordlander shook his head. But he made no further comment and edged his way towards the house. Wallander stayed still. Thanks to his alarm system, von Enke would know that somebody was moving around on the island. The hope was that he wouldn’t realise there was more than one person outside his hunting lodge.

  Nordlander reached the house wall. Wallander would never have noticed him if he hadn’t known he was there. But he continued to wait, not moving a muscle. He felt a strange mixture of calm and uneasiness. The end of the story is nigh, he thought. Am I right, or have I made a huge mistake?

  He regretted not having explained to Nordlander that the mission might take some time.

  A nightbird fluttered past, then vanished. Wallander listened into the darkness for any noise that would tell him Hakan von Enke was on his way. Nordlander was standing motionless by the house wall. The music was still oozing out through the open window.

  He gave a start when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned and found himself looking into Hakan von Enke’s face.

  ‘Are you here again?’ said von Enke in a low voice. ‘We didn’t arrange this. I could have mistaken you for an intruder. What do you want?’

  ‘I want to speak to you.’

  ‘Did something happen?’

  ‘All kinds of things have happened. As I’m sure you know, I went to Berlin and talked to your old friend George Talboth. I must say that he behaved exactly as I had expected a high-ranking CIA officer to act.’

  Wallander had prepared himself as best he could. He knew he couldn’t afford to exaggerate. He had to speak loudly enough for Nordlander to hear what was being said, but not so loudly that von Enke would suspect there was somebody else in the vicinity, listening in.

  ‘George said you seemed to be a good man.’

  ‘I’ve never seen an aquarium like the one he showed me.’

  ‘It’s remarkable. Especially the trains travelling through their little tunnels.’

  A gust of wind whooshed past, then all was quiet again.

  ‘How did you get here?’ von Enke asked.

  ‘With the same boat as last time.’

  ‘And you came on your own?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I?’

  ‘Questions in answer to questions always make me suspicious.’

  Von Enke suddenly switched on a torch that he’d been hiding next to his body. He aimed it at Wallander’s face. Third degree, Wallander thought. As long as he doesn’t shine the light at the house and discover Sten Nordlander. That would ruin everything.

  The torch was switched off.

  ‘We don’t need to mess around out here.’

  Wallander followed in von Enke’s footsteps. When they entered the house he switched off the radio. Nothing in the room had changed since Wallander’s earlier visit.

  Von Enke was on his guard. Wallander couldn’t work out if that was due to his instinct, warning him of danger, or if it was just natural suspicion following Wallander’s sudden appearance on the island.

  ‘You must have a motive,’ said von Enke, slowly. A sudden visit like this, in the middle of the night?’

  ‘I just wanted to talk to you.’

  ‘About your visit to Berlin?’

  ‘No, not about that.’

  ‘Then explain yourself.’

  Wallander hoped that Nordlander could hear this conversation, standing outside the window. What if von Enke suddenly decided to close it? I have no time to spare, Wallander concluded. I have to come straight to the point.

  ‘Explain yourself,’ von Enke said again.

  ‘It’s about Louise,’ Wallander said. ‘The truth about her.’

  ‘Isn’t that what we talked about last time we were sitting here?’

  ‘It is. But you didn’t tell me the truth.’

  Von Enke looked at him with the same non-committal expression as before.

  ‘Something didn’t add up,’ said Wallander. ‘It was as if I were looking up in the air when I should have been examining the ground at my feet. That happened when I visited Berlin. It suddenly became clear to me that George Talboth wasn’t just answering my questions. He was also investigating, very discreetly and skilfully, how much I knew. Once I realised that, I discovered something else as well. Something horrific, shameful, a betrayal so despicable and misanthropic that I didn’t want to believe it at first. What I believed, what Ytterberg thought, what
you said and George Talboth maintained, was not the truth at all. I was being used, exploited. I had stumbled obediently straight into all the traps that had been set for me. But that also opened my eyes to another person.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The person we can call the real Louise. She was never a spy. She wasn’t false in any way; she was the most genuine person imaginable. The first time I met her I was struck by her lovely smile. I thought about that again when we met in Djursholm. I was convinced later that she had been using that smile to conceal her big secret - until I realised that her smile was absolutely genuine.’

  ‘Have you come here to talk about my dead wife’s smile?’

  Wallander shook his head in resignation. The whole situation had become so repugnant that he didn’t know how he was going to handle it. He should have been infuriated, but he didn’t have the strength.

  ‘I’ve come here because I’ve discovered the truth I’ve been searching for. Louise has never been remotely close to being a spy and betraying her country. I should have understood that much sooner. But I allowed myself to be deceived.’

  ‘Who deceived you?’

  ‘I did. I was just as misled as everybody else into believing that the enemy always came from the East. But the one who deceived me most was you. The real spy.’

  *

  Still the same expressionless face, Wallander thought. But how long can he keep it up?

  ‘Are you suggesting that I am a spy?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘You’re alleging that I spied for the Soviet Union or Russia? You’re crazy!’

  ‘I said nothing about the former Soviet Union or the new Russia. I said that you are a spy. For the USA. You have been for many years, Hakan. For exactly how long and how it all started are questions only you can answer. Nor do I know what your motives are. It wasn’t you who suspected Louise; she was the one who suspected you of being an American agent. That was what killed her.’

  ‘I didn’t kill Louise!’

  The first crack, Wallander thought. Hakan’s voice is starting to sound shrill. He’s beginning to defend himself.

  ‘I don’t think you did. No doubt others did that. Maybe you received assistance from George Talboth. But she died to prevent you from being exposed.’

  ‘You can’t prove your absurd allegations.’

  ‘You’re absolutely right,’ said Wallander. ‘I can’t. But there are others who can. I know enough to make the police and the armed forces start looking at what’s happened from a different perspective. The spy they’ve long suspected was operating in the Swedish armed forces was not a woman. It was a man. A man who didn’t hesitate to hide behind his own wife as a way of providing himself with a perfect disguise. Everybody was looking for a Russian spy, a woman. When they should have been looking for a man spying for the USA. Nobody thought of that possibility, everybody was preoccupied with searching for enemies in the East. That has been the case for the whole of my life: the threat comes from the East. Nobody wanted to believe that an individual might even consider the possibility of betraying his country in the other direction, to the USA. Anyone who did warn of anything like that was a lone voice crying in the wilderness. You could maintain, of course, that the USA already had access to everything they wanted to know about our defence services, but that wasn’t the case. NATO, and above all the USA, needed help obtaining accurate information about the Swedish armed forces and also about how much we knew about various Russian military plans.’

  Wallander paused. Von Enke continued to look at him with the same lack of expression in his face.

  ‘You provided yourself with a perfect shield when you made yourself unpopular in the navy,’ Wallander went on. ‘You protested about the Russian submarines trapped inside Swedish territorial waters being set free. You asked so many questions that you were regarded as an extreme, fanatical enemy of Russia. At the same time, you could also criticise the USA when it suited you. But you knew of course that in fact it was NATO submarines hiding in our territorial waters. You were playing a game, and you won. You beat everybody. With the possible exception of your wife, who began to suspect that everything wasn’t what it seemed. I don’t know why you came to hide here. Maybe because your employers ordered you to? Was it one of them who appeared on the other side of the fence in Djursholm, smoking, when you were celebrating your seventy-fifth birthday? Was that an agreed way of passing a message to you? This hunting lodge was designated as a place for you to withdraw to a long time ago. You knew about it from Eskil Lundberg’s father, who was more than willing to help you after you made sure he was compensated for battered jetties and damaged nets. He was also the man who helped you by never saying anything about the bugging device the Americans failed to attach to the Russian underwater cable. I suspect the arrangement was probably that you would be picked up from here by some ship if it should become necessary to evacuate you. They probably said nothing about the fact that Louise would have to die. But it was your friends who killed her. And you knew the price you would have to pay for what you were doing. You couldn’t do anything to prevent what happened. Isn’t that right? The only thing I still wonder about is what drove you to sacrifice your wife on top of everything else.’

  Hakan von Enke was staring at his hand. He seemed somehow uninterested in what Wallander had said. Possibly because he had to face up to the fact that what he had done had resulted in Louise’s death, Wallander thought, and now there was nothing he could do about it.

  ‘It was never the intention that she should die,’ von Enke said, without taking his eyes off his hand.

  ‘What did you think when you heard she was dead?’

  Von Enke’s reply was matter-of-fact, almost dry.

  ‘I came very close to putting an end to it all. The only thing that stopped me was the thought of my grandchild. But now I don’t know any more.’

  They fell silent again. Wallander thought it would soon be time for Sten Nordlander to come into the room. But there was another question he wanted answered first.

  ‘How did it happen?’ he asked.

  ‘How did what happen?’

  ‘What was it that made you into a spy?’

  ‘It’s a long story.’

  ‘We have plenty of time. And you don’t need to give me an exhaustive answer; just tell me enough to help me understand.’

  Von Enke leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. Wallander suddenly realised that he was facing a very old man.

  ‘It started a long time ago,’ von Enke said without opening his eyes. ‘I was contacted by the Americans as early as the beginning of the 1960s. I was soon convinced of how important it was for the USA and NATO to have access to information that would enable them to defend us. We would never be able to survive on our own. Without the USA we were lost from the very start.’

  ‘Who contacted you?’

  ‘You have to keep in mind what it was like in those days. There was a group of mainly young people who spent all their time protesting against the USA’s war in Vietnam. But most of us knew that we needed America’s support in order to survive when the balloon went up in Europe. I was upset by all those naive and romantic left-wingers. I felt that I needed to do something. I went in with my eyes wide open. I suppose you could say it was ideology. It’s the same today. Without the USA, the world would be at the mercy of forces whose only aim is to deprive Europe of power. What do you think China’s ambitions are? What will the Russians do once they’ve solved their internal problems?’

  ‘But money must have come into it somehow?’

  Von Enke didn’t reply. He turned away, lost in his own thoughts again. Wallander asked a few more questions, to which he received no answers. Von Enke had simply brought the conversation to a close.

  He suddenly stood up and walked towards the kitchenette. He took a bottle of beer out of the fridge, then opened one of the drawers in the kitchen cabinet. Wallander was watching him carefully.

  When von Enke turned to face him
, he had a pistol in his hand. Wallander stood up quickly. The gun was pointed at him. Von Enke slowly put the bottle down on the work surface.

  He raised the gun. Wallander could see that it was pointing straight at his head. He shouted, roared at von Enke. Then he saw the pistol move.

  ‘I can’t go on any longer,’ said von Enke. ‘I have absolutely no future any more.’

  He placed the barrel against his chin and pulled the trigger. The sound echoed around the room. As he collapsed, his face covered in blood, Sten Nordlander came storming into the room.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ he screamed.’ Did he shoot you?’

  ‘No. He shot himself.’

  They stared at the man lying on the floor, his body in an unnatural position. The blood covering his face made it impossible to make out his eyes, to see if they were closed or not.

  Wallander was the first to realise that von Enke was still alive. He grabbed a sweater hanging over the arm of a chair and pressed it against von Enke’s chin. He shouted to Nordlander, telling him to get some towels. The bullet had exited through von Enke’s cheek. He had failed to send the bullet through his brain.

  ‘He missed,’ Wallander said as Nordlander handed him a sheet he had pulled off the bed.

  Hakan von Enke’s eyes were open; they had not glazed over.

  ‘Press hard,’ said Wallander, showing Nordlander what to do.

  He took out his mobile phone and dialled the emergency number. But there was no signal. He ran outside and scrambled up the rocky slope behind the house. But there was no signal there either. He went back inside.

  ‘He’ll bleed to death,’ said Nordlander.

  ‘You have to press hard,’ said Wallander. ‘My phone isn’t working. I’ll have to go and get help. Phone coverage is sometimes pretty bad here.’

  ‘I don’t think he’ll make it.’

  Sten Nordlander was kneeling beside the bleeding man. He looked up at Wallander with horror in his eyes.

  ‘Is it true?’

  ‘You heard what we said?’

  ‘Every word. Is it true?’