Sweden.
“Charlie, I have to hang up.”
He ended the call.
He called Sweden with the satellite phone and heard a man answer by saying his name. Squeezed the telephone when he heard the name.
After a few seconds of silence, the man spoke again. He sounded increasingly worried.
“Lazarev? Hello? Lazarev? Lazarev?”
94
“Carl?” said the nurse. “Can’t you sleep? Should I turn the radio on?”
Borgenstierna waved his hand. Go ahead and turn the radio on—I’m not going to fall asleep regardless, he wanted to say, but no words passed his lips. The nurse closed the door behind her, and the news started.
The first segment had to do with an opinion poll carried out ahead of the coming Russian election. It looked like a dead heat. How could they not choose to move forward? Onward? What would it take to cleanse the country of the evil forces that continued to drag it back into the filth?
The enemy never stopped. Never forgave. Never forgot. They were still out there. And the fight Carl and the others had fought behind the scenes in the corridors of power would have to go on. Even after his death. Until Russia was a free country, a country in Europe, a country that wanted to live in peace with its neighbors.
Worst of all was the distrust Carl encountered. The thorn that had tormented him in the forties was still tormenting him today. He had seen no alternative to dissolving the Baltic Foundation’s board of directors. They hadn’t believed him—neither the government and intelligence service back then nor the business leaders of today. They ridiculed him and refused to listen to his warnings. Hedin and the others in the Intelligence Office had never fully believed him or Tatyana or believed their love for each other was real. They had found it just as likely that Carl himself was a Russian spy. It wasn’t clear to him what Ståhl and Lennström and the other representatives of the business community thought about him today. Perhaps they simply thought he was an old man stuck in a fear of Russia with roots in the darkest days of the Cold War, lost in conspiracy theories.
The radio news program went on to another segment—another report from Russia. The chairman of northwestern Russia’s largest cellular service provider had been found dead. His death was being explained as the result of a bizarre accident. In a hangar in a neighborhood of abandoned buildings on the outskirts of Saint Petersburg, where this successful company leader had kept his private collection of World War II warplanes, thieves had managed to steal his car. They had subsequently crashed it inside the hangar, immediately killing the chairman.
The chairman, Nestor Lazarev, had been eighty-one years old.
Lazarev?
That was the name the oligarch in Davos had given him.
The foundation is a cover for the black generals. The man you seek is among them. Lazarev is the Goose.
Dead?
For a moment Carl’s heart stopped beating. His head felt light. It was difficult for him to draw air into his lungs, and his throat was burning.
He reached for the alarm button.
Everything around him started spinning, like water being sucked down a bathtub drain.
He could hear someone shouting from somewhere.
“Mr. Borgenstierna! Mr. Borgenstierna!”
Stockholm, February 1944
Carl stood at the kitchen stove, preparing the evening meal. He walked to one of the kitchen windows and looked down at the street, hoping to catch a glimpse of Tatyana. She had gone to the theater, and it seemed she would get home late this evening. His desire for her burned in his body. Soon it would be time for her to give birth.
Carl had chosen their apartment with the greatest care. It was adjacent to the Tegnérlunden park, near the headquarters of both the Swedish Trade Union Confederation and the governing political party. Their proximity to these two pillars of Swedish society made them feel safe. Feel that she was safe. From her husband.
Carl had tried to convince Hedin that the Soviet Union would take revenge for the imprisonment of Viktor Gusin, but Hedin had refused to believe him. The war was almost over. Why would the Russians take action against Sweden, a country that hadn’t even participated in the war?
Carl was looking over at the stove when he suddenly heard a low humming above him that became the howl of engines. Then came the fatal silence.
He had to take hold of the windowsill to steady himself when he heard the first explosion. The whole apartment shook. Flowerpots and candlesticks fell to the floor. He looked out the window and saw that on the other side of the street the window glass had been blown out, saw people standing in the gaping holes of the window frames, just staring.
Then everything went black. The electricity had been cut off.
And the bombs continued to fall.
The pilots switched off the bombers’ engines as they approached their targets. They glided in like gigantic metal dragons, silent and invisible in the winter night. Carl put his winter coat on and ran out. The air was so cold he felt as if he were swallowing icicles. On the ground beneath his feet, ice crystals mixed with shards of glass from the windows.
His head was in an uproar. He had to get to Tatyana. She had said they would do this, take revenge on her and see to it that her husband was set free. But to bomb Stockholm? It was madness.
The howl returned when the engines were switched on again. The planes were flying at high altitude. Carl assumed they had flown in a wide arc south of the city and were now on their way back. He ran past the Central Station and through Gamla Stan, directly toward the thundering noise above him.
He crossed Södermalmstorg and turned right onto Hornsgatan but stopped abruptly when he saw a hole in the street. A man was standing next to the hole, screaming at the top of his lungs. Carl approached cautiously, smelled the sharp odor of burning fat. He came to the edge of the crater the bomb had created in the middle of the street and looked down. In it he saw a horse rolling itself against the snow and gravel, trying with wild, desperate jerks to extinguish the fire blazing on its back.
The man who had roared pulled out a revolver and pointed it at the horse. Carl looked away, up at the sky. He saw more bombers up there. When he realized what their next target must be, he started running again. He barely reacted when he heard the revolver shot. When the sky darkened again, he threw himself to the ground. Everything shook, and shattered glass rained down from the buildings around him.
Finally, there was quiet, and Carl stood up and ran on.
When he reached the slope that led down to Eriksdalsparken, he stopped. His heart was pounding, and his pulse throbbed in his ears.
The field had been transformed into a gigantic crater, as if a meteor had landed in the middle of it. Rows of benches had been transformed into kindling. Fires burned all around him. Where was Tatyana?
After what seemed like an eternity, Carl caught sight of what was left of the theater.
He hurled himself down the hill, fell to the ground, rolled, and got back on his feet. He sank into deep snow, crawled out, and kept going. Exhausted, he reached for the door, which was now held to the frame by only one hinge. He took hold of the door handle, pulled it open, and called her name.
“Tatyana!”
Then he saw her. She lay on the floor, under a fallen roof beam. They had done it; they had taken revenge on the woman he loved. He knew it was only a matter of time before the man who had destroyed her life would be set free.
With a roar, he lifted Tatyana from the floor. Her body was limp, but he couldn’t think of that.
With Tatyana in his arms, he began running toward Södersjukhuset. He had to get hold of Wallentin. Wallentin had to save her.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 6
95
It had been a terrible awakening. She had been dreaming of David, but then Sarah had hauled her out of bed, screaming about a bomb. The explosion that had knocked them to the ground. The sirens. The chaos. The men who had wrapped blankets around them and asked all their
questions.
Gabbi had refused all offers of protection and treatment. She didn’t want to end up in a lot of files. She didn’t want them to contact her husband, ask him to come and pick her up. The situation was different for Sarah. The attack had been aimed at her.
Gabbi had gotten behind the wheel of the Saab. It hadn’t been morning yet, and she couldn’t come home in the middle of the night. No excuse would have sounded believable.
She had driven around looking for somewhere to kill time. The only place that had been open was the McDonald’s in the Tyresö shopping center. She had ordered coffee and sat there staring out a window, had tried to ignore the looks and shouts from drunk teenagers staggering in after a night on the town. What was she, a mother of three, a woman in her best years, doing here? How had she ended up experimenting with a woman someone badly wanted to kill?
This wasn’t how she’d imagined her life turning out.
The hours passed slowly. She switched on her cell phone and saw that she’d missed a call. It hadn’t been from David.
She called her voice mail and recognized the voice immediately, though it had a different, much more serious tone than when she’d last heard it. It was the gentleman Good Samaritan who had saved her at the checkout counter in ICA.
“Gabbi, this is Charlie Knutsson. We need to talk. I’m worried about David.”
In her mind she again saw the man who had been standing next to a car parked outside Sarah’s house. The man who had looked so much like David.
But she couldn’t call Charlie at this hour.
The hours passed slowly, but when she’d drunk her fourth cup of coffee and the clock had struck six, she decided to get in her car and drive home. She’d be home at six thirty, before anyone was awake. The children were away for the night, and David was alone in the house. Perhaps he was still sitting in front of the computer with his headphones on, preparing for the day’s races at Solvalla?
But it would be fine with her if he was in bed asleep. She wouldn’t mind lying down next to him for an hour or two. Or she could fix a big breakfast and surprise him. That was always popular. It didn’t feel as if she would be able to sleep.
In her dream, David had been inside her, strong, hard, and full of passion, as he had once been, before the children, before the company, before the house. Before the money.
The city was still sleeping. There were hardly any cars out, and she was able to drive home quickly.
When she turned onto their street, the neighbors’ houses were dark. No one seemed to have gotten up, which was ideal. She knew how much the neighborhood wives liked to gossip. The young couple from the sticks with a lot of new money they couldn’t handle. Doomed to fail.
The last thing she wanted was for the neighbors to turn out to be right.
When she neared the house, she saw a man get in a car and drive away fast.
What the hell was this?
Who had been in their house?
Gabbi parked in the driveway and hurried out. When she pressed the button on her key fob to lock the car, the locking sound seemed to bounce off the walls of the houses on the quiet street; it seemed so loud, Gabbi feared it would wake all the neighbors.
She looked across the roof of the car. Had the blue car stopped or come back? She saw no sign of it.
What was it she could glimpse behind the blinds in the kitchen window? A long shadow?
When she opened the door, she immediately noticed a strange smell. Apart from a dripping noise from the kitchen, the house was completely quiet. The faucet at the kitchen sink? No, it sounded like drops falling on plastic.
She set her bag down in the hall.
“Hello?” she said in the darkness and the silence. “David?”
From the hall, she could see straight into the living room. The big crystal chandelier from the kitchen was lying on the sofa. Next to it lay David’s watch.
She went to the right, toward the kitchen.
David!
Gabbi rushed to the stepladder, which had tipped over onto the floor, tried to right it, balance it. But she slipped on the wet tarpaulin covering the kitchen floor, fell, ended up with the stepladder on top of her. Felt how the slippery, wet substance on the tarpaulin soaked into her clothes.
No, David, please, David, no!
She tried to get the damned stepladder to stand upright. She set it in place. She put her arms around David’s legs, around his waist. When she was balancing on the top step, she tried with all her strength to lift him so the noose around his neck wouldn’t bear the weight of his body.
But he was much too heavy.
And she was much too late.
96
Ray had parked the Passat next to the Fiskartorpet recreation area in Lill-Jansskogen. He was leaning against the car, holding a letter in one hand and a lighter in the other. The blue flames and the fluttering sparks disappeared into the damp black night air.
He had felt so alive during the last couple of months, ever since Gusin had contacted him and said it was time. Ray had shivered when he heard that voice. Had realized how much he had missed him, the man who had changed his life forever when he took a poor boy from the streets of Saint Petersburg, gave him new faith in himself and the fatherland, and trained him at the Colony Field. When they walked together in Afghanistan, he had decided: he would do anything for that man.
And he got to do a great deal. After the war, he was sent to Sweden. “For the sake of the fatherland,” Gusin had said. Rodion Avian Yumatov had become Ray, a well-adjusted immigrant from Lithuania, with the new last name Karvelis. The Spetsnaz soldier had stepped out of his former role, taken on casual work, maintained a private self-training program—but his life had become gray. Until that day two months ago, when Gusin had called and said it was time. The fatherland needed him again.
Watching the sparks rise, Ray called his Swedish contact.
“You were right,” he said. “We pushed David Julin too far. When I got there, he had already killed himself.”
The man took a few deep breaths.
“Are you completely certain?”
“I saw him with my own eyes.”
“That’s very good news, Ray.”
“He left behind a letter that gave details of everything he had done and made reference to files and e-mails on his computer. He had written about his contact with me and named a few other people who were to be contacted, including a buddy of yours he wanted to explain himself to.”
“God. What did you do with all that?”
“Fate dealt us a good hand. His wife came home unexpectedly, but I had had time to reformat the hard disk, and I took the letter with me.”
Ray waved the burning sheet of paper; the flames were singeing his fingertips.
“All the evidence has been destroyed.”
He could hear the relief through the receiver.
“Nice work. Now we’ll move ahead with the last things that need to be done. As I said earlier, the police seem to be involved now. Sarah Hansen survived the explosion.”
“You can take care of your friend,” said Ray. “I’m going to let loose chaos in Stockholm. The Tatar whore, her Swedish hero, and his boss are going to feel the hellfire they deserve.”
97
From the sky-blue armchair, the office looked as it always did. But it wasn’t Sarah who had closed the door after him. It was Charlie K.
Charlie sat down at the desk as Max sank into the armchair across from him. Max’s whole body ached, but he couldn’t rest yet. He had come to Vektor directly from Arlanda Airport.
“It’s good to see you safe and more or less sound,” Charlie began. “I can only guess at the hell you’ve been through.”
“I’ll be all right. But how is Sarah? Have you found out what happened to her?”
Charlie fidgeted in his chair.
“She made it out before the bomb detonated, thank God. And escaped with only minor injuries. Now she’s resting up with Lisa and Björn.”
Max closed his eyes. Let himself feel thankful for a moment. Then looked at Charlie.
“Does she have police protection?”
Charlie nodded.
“They think the actual detonation was triggered by remote control. The network has been subjected to a series of attacks over an extended time. Attacks that seemed at first to be aimed at Telia’s systems but that later were directed more and more at Vektor and, finally, Sarah personally. It appears there was a lengthy period during which Vektor’s cell phones were monitored.”
The Goose’s tapping on the satellite telephone he had held on the other side of the glass wall. The maps on the walls in the hangar. Maps of Sweden and Finland. It had been pure luck that Sarah had survived.
“What do the police know?”
“It’s only recently that this has become an actual police matter.”
Threats to national security rarely became police matters.
“How did you know it wasn’t a police matter?”
“I learned from an old acquaintance that Vektor’s call logs had been compromised. Frank Ståhl, a top manager at Telia.”
Frank. It was the second time in a short period he’d heard that name.
“You never considered reporting it to the police?”
“Frank convinced me not to do it. He and his company are an important partner for us. I thought he had good reasons.”
Charlie had always been a pragmatist. One could only hope no one would have to die because people like him always put sponsor revenues first.
“But the police did show up in Tyresö? What are they saying?”
“They suspect that David Julin, a person connected both to me and to Sarah, hacked Telia’s servers. He was a very prominent person in the IT world. It all seems unreal, actually, but it may be that he got into economic difficulties and let himself be exploited, as a small piece in a big game. A lone madman wasn’t behind all this.”
Ask No Mercy (Max Anger Book 1) Page 34