The Troubled Man

by Henning Mankell

  Coffee was served in an adjacent room with comfortable easy chairs. When everyone had finished eating, Wallander went out into a conservatory to stretch his legs. The restaurant was surrounded by spacious grounds – the estate had previously been the home of one of Sweden’s first and richest industrialists.

  He gave a start when Håkan von Enke appeared by his side out of nowhere, clutching something as un-PC as an old-fashioned pipe and a packet of tobacco. Wallander recognised the brand: Hamilton’s Blend. For a short period in his late teens he had been a pipe smoker himself, and used the same tobacco.

  ‘Winter,’ said von Enke. ‘And we’re in for a snowstorm, according to the forecast.’

  Von Enke paused for a moment and gazed out at the dark sky.

  ‘When you’re on board a submarine at a sufficient depth, the climate and weather conditions are totally irrelevant. Everything is calm; you’re in a sort of ocean basement. In the Baltic Sea, twenty-five metres is deep enough if there isn’t too much wind. It’s more difficult in the North Sea. I remember once leaving Scotland in stormy conditions. We were listing fifteen degrees at a depth of thirty metres. It wasn’t exactly pleasant.’

  He lit his pipe and eyed Wallander keenly.

  ‘Is that too poetic a thought for a police officer?’

  ‘No, but a submarine is a different world as far as I’m concerned. A scary one, I should add.’

  The commander sucked eagerly at his pipe.

  ‘Let’s be honest,’ he said. ‘This party is boring both of us stiff. Everybody knows that I arranged it. I did it because a lot of my friends wanted me to. But now we can hide ourselves away in one of the little side rooms. Sooner or later my wife will come looking for me, but we can talk in peace until then.’

  ‘But you’re the star of this show,’ said Wallander.

  ‘It’s like in a good play,’ said von Enke. ‘In order to increase the excitement, the main character doesn’t need to be onstage all the time. It can be advantageous if some of the most important parts of the plot take place in the wings.’

  He fell silent. Too abruptly, far too abruptly, Wallander thought. Von Enke was staring at something behind Wallander’s back. Wallander turned round. He could see the garden, and beyond it one of the minor roads that eventually joined the main Djursholm-Stockholm highway. Wallander caught a glimpse of a man on the other side of the fence, standing under a lamp post. Next to him was a parked car, with the engine running. The exhaust fumes rose and slowly dispersed in the yellow light. Wallander could tell that von Enke was worried.

  ‘Let’s get our coffee and then shut ourselves away,’ he said.

  Before leaving the conservatory, Wallander turned round again; the car had vanished, and so had the man by the lamp post. Perhaps it was someone von Enke had forgotten to invite to the party, Wallander thought. It couldn’t have been anyone looking for me, surely – some journalist wanting to talk to me about the gun I left in the restaurant.

  After they picked up their coffee, von Enke led Wallander into a little room with brown wooden panelling and leather easy chairs. Wallander noticed that the room had no windows. Von Enke had been watching him.

  ‘There’s a reason for this room being a sort of bunker,’ he said. ‘In the 1930s the house was owned for a few years by a man who owned a lot of Stockholm nightclubs, most of them illegal. Every night his armed couriers would drive around and collect all the takings, which were brought back here. In those days this room contained a big safe. His accountants would sit here, adding up the cash, doing the books, and then stash the money away in the safe. When the owner was arrested for his shady dealings, the safe was cut up. The man was called Göransson, if I remember correctly. He was given a long sentence that he couldn’t handle. He hanged himself in his cell at Långholmen Prison.’

  He fell silent, took a sip of coffee, and sucked at his pipe, which had gone out. And that was the moment, in that insulated little room where the only sound was a faint hum from the party guests outside, that Wallander realised Håkan von Enke was scared. He had seen this many times before in his life: a person frightened of something, real or imagined. He was certain he wasn’t mistaken.

  The conversation started awkwardly, with von Enke reminiscing about the years when he was still on active duty as a naval officer.

  ‘The autumn of 1980,’ he said. ‘That’s a long time ago now, a generation back, twenty-eight long years. What were you doing then?’

  ‘I was working as a police officer in Ystad. Linda was very young. I’d decided to move there in order to be closer to my elderly father. I also thought it would be a better environment for Linda to grow up in. Or at least, that was one of the reasons why we left Malmö. What happened next is a different story altogether.’

  Von Enke didn’t seem to be listening to what Wallander said. He continued along his own line.

  ‘I was working at the east coast naval base that autumn. Two years before I had stepped down as officer in charge of one of our best submarines, one of the Water Snake class. We submariners always called it simply the Snake. My posting at the marine base was only temporary. I wanted to go back to sea, but the powers that be wanted me to become part of the operations command of the whole Swedish naval defence forces. In September the Warsaw Pact countries were conducting an exercise along the East German coast. MILOBALT, they called it. I can still remember that. It was nothing remarkable; they generally had their autumn exercises at about the same time as we had ours. But an unusually large number of vessels were involved, since they were practising landings and submarine recovery. We had succeeded in finding out the details without too much effort. We heard from the National Defence Radio Centre that there was an awful lot of radio communication traffic between Russian vessels and their home base near Leningrad, but everything seemed to be routine; we kept an eye on what they were doing and made a note of anything we thought important in our logbooks. But then came that Thursday – it was 18 September, a date that will be the very last thing I forget. We had a call from the duty officer on one of the fleet’s tugs, HMS Ajax, saying that they had just discovered a foreign submarine in Swedish territorial waters. I was in one of the map rooms at the naval base, looking for a more detailed chart of the East German coast, when an agitated national serviceman burst into the room. He never managed to explain exactly what had happened, but I went back to the command centre and spoke to the duty officer on the Ajax. He said he’d been scanning the sea with his telescope and suddenly noticed the submarine’s aerials some three hundred yards away. Fifteen seconds later the submarine surfaced. The officer was on the ball, and figured out that the submarine had probably been at periscope depth but had then started to dive when they saw the tug. The Ajax was just south of Huvudskär when the incident happened, and the submarine was heading south-west, which meant that she was parallel with the border of Swedish waters but definitely on the Swedish side of the line. It didn’t take long for me to find out if there were any Swedish submarines in the area: there were not. I requested radio contact with the Ajax again, and asked the duty officer if he could describe the conning tower or the periscope he had seen. From what he said I realised immediately that it was one of the submarines of the class NATO called Whisky. And at the time they were used only by the Russians and the Poles. I’m sure you’ll understand that my heart started beating faster when I established that. But I had two other questions.’

  Von Enke paused, as if he expected Wallander to ask what the two questions were. Some peals of laughter could be heard on the other side of the door, but they soon faded away.

  ‘I suppose you wanted to know if the submarine was in Swedish territorial waters by mistake,’ said Wallander. ‘As was claimed when that other Russian submarine ran aground off Karlskrona?’

  ‘I had already answered that question. There is no naval vessel as meticulous with its navigation as a submarine. That goes without saying. The submarine the Ajax had come across intended to be where it was. The question was
what exactly it was up to. Why was it reconnoitring and surfacing, apparently not expecting to be discovered? It could have been a sign that the crew was being careless. But of course, there was also another possibility.’

  ‘That the submarine wanted to be discovered?’

  Von Enke nodded, and made another attempt to light his reluctant pipe.

  ‘In that case,’ he said, ‘to encounter a tugboat would be ideal. A vessel like that probably wouldn’t even have a catapult to attack you with. Nor would the crew be trained for confrontation. Since I was in charge at the base, I contacted the supreme commander, and he agreed with me that we should immediately send in a helicopter equipped for tracking down submarines. It made sonar contact with a moving object we decided was a submarine. For the first time in my life I gave an order to open fire in circumstances other than training exercises. The helicopter fired a depth charge to warn the submarine. Then it vanished, and we lost contact.’

  ‘How could it simply disappear?’

  ‘Submarines have many ways of making themselves invisible. They can descend into deep troughs, hugging the cliff walls, and thus confuse anybody trying to trace them with echo sounders. We sent out several helicopters, but we never found any further trace of it.’

  ‘But couldn’t it have been damaged?’

  ‘That’s not the way it goes. According to international law, the first depth charge must be a warning. It’s only later that you can force a submarine up to the surface for identification.’

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘Nothing, really. There was an inquiry, and they decided that I’d done the right thing. Maybe this was the overture for what was to follow a couple of years later, when Swedish territorial waters were crawling with foreign submarines, mainly in the Stockholm archipelago. I suppose the most important result was that we had confirmation of the fact that Russian interest in our navigational channels was as great as ever. This happened at a time when nobody thought the Berlin Wall would fall or the Soviet Union collapse. It’s easy to forget that. The Cold War wasn’t over. After that incident, the Swedish navy was granted a big increase in funding. But that was all.’

  Von Enke drained the rest of his coffee. Wallander was about to stand up when his host started speaking again.

  ‘I’m not done yet. Two years later, off we went again. By then I’d been promoted to the very top of the Swedish naval defence staff. Our HQ was in Berga, and there was a combat command on duty round the clock. On 1 October we had an alarm call that we could never have imagined, even in our wildest dreams. There were indications that a submarine, or even several, were in the Hårsfjärden channel, very close to our base on Muskö. So it was no longer just a case of trespassing in Swedish territorial waters; there were foreign submarines in a restricted area. No doubt you remember all the fuss?’

  ‘The newspapers were full of it, and television reporters were clambering around on slippery rocks.’

  ‘I don’t know what you could compare it to. Perhaps a foreign helicopter landing in a courtyard at the heart of the royal palace. That’s what it felt like, having submarines close to our top-secret military installations.’

  ‘That was when I’d just received confirmation that I could start working in Ystad.’

  Suddenly the door opened. Von Enke gave a start. Wallander noted that his right hand was on its way to the breast pocket of his jacket. Then he let it fall back onto his knee again. The door had been opened by a semi-inebriated woman who was looking for a toilet. She withdrew, and they were alone again.

  ‘It was in October,’ von Enke resumed once the door had closed. ‘It sometimes felt as if the whole Swedish coast was under siege by unidentified foreign submarines. I was glad I wasn’t the one responsible for talking to all the journalists who had gathered out at Berga. We had to convert a few barrack rooms into press rooms. I was extremely busy all the time, trying to find one of those submarines. We’d lose all our credibility if we couldn’t manage to force a single one to the surface. And then, at last, came the evening when we had trapped a submarine in the Hårsfjärden channel. There was no doubt about it; the command team was convinced this was it. I was the one responsible for giving the order to open fire. During those hectic hours I spoke several times to the supreme commander and the new minister of defence. His name was Andersson, if you recall – a man from Borlänge.’

  ‘I have a vague memory of him being called “Red Börje”.’

  ‘That’s right. But he wasn’t up to the job. He no doubt thought the submarines were pure hell. He went back home to Dalarna and we got Anders Thunborg as minister of defence. One of Palme’s blue-eyed boys. A lot of my colleagues didn’t trust him, but the contact I had with him was good. He didn’t interfere; he asked questions. If he got an answer, he was satisfied. But once when he called me I had the distinct impression that Palme was in the room with him, standing by his side. I don’t know if that was true. But the feeling was very strong.’

  ‘Anyway, what happened?’

  Von Enke’s face twitched, as if he was annoyed by Wallander interrupting him. But when he continued there was no sign of that.

  ‘We had cornered the submarine in such a way that it couldn’t move without our permission. I spoke to the supreme commander and told him that we were about to fire depth charges and force the sub up to the surface. We needed another hour to prepare for the operation, and then we would be able to reveal to the world the identity of this submarine that had invaded Swedish territorial waters. Half an hour passed. The hands on the wall clock seemed to be moving unbearably slowly. The whole time, I was in touch with the helicopters and the surface vessels surrounding the submarine. Forty-five minutes passed. And then it happened.’

  Von Enke broke off abruptly, then stood up and left the room. Wallander wondered if he had been taken ill. But after a few moments the commander returned, carrying two glasses of cognac.

  ‘It’s a chilly winter evening,’ he said. ‘We need something to warm us up. Nobody seems to have missed us, so we can carry on chatting in this bunker.’

  Wallander waited for the rest of the story. Even if it wasn’t perhaps totally engrossing, listening to old stories about submarines, he preferred von Enke’s company to having to talk to people he didn’t know.

  ‘That’s when it happened,’ repeated von Enke. ‘Four minutes before the attack was due to take place, the phone rang – the direct line to Defence Command Sweden. As far as I know it was one of the few lines guaranteed to be safe from bugging, and it was also fitted with an automatic scrambler. I was given an order that I would never have expected in a thousand years. Can you guess what it was?’

  Wallander shook his head, and wrapped his hand around his glass to warm up the brandy.

  ‘We were ordered to abort the depth-charge attack. Naturally, I was dumbstruck and demanded an explanation. But I didn’t receive one – not then, at least. Just the specific order that on no account should any depth charges be fired. Obviously, I had no choice but to obey. There were only two minutes left when the helicopters were informed of the decision. None of us at Berga could understand what was going on. It was exactly ten minutes before we received our next order. If possible, it was even more incomprehensible. Our superiors seemed to have taken leave of their senses. We were ordered to back off.’

  Wallander was becoming more interested.

  ‘So you were told to let the submarine get away?’

  ‘Nobody actually said that, of course. Not in so many words, at least. We were ordered to concentrate our attention on a different part of the Hårsfjärden channel, at its very edge, south of the Danzig straits. A helicopter had made contact with another submarine. Why was that one more important than the one we had encircled and were just about to force up to the surface? My colleagues and I were at a loss. I asked to speak to the supreme commander in person, but he was busy and couldn’t be interrupted. Which was very odd, because he was the one who had authorised the operation not long before. I e
ven tried to speak to the minister of defence or his private secretary, but everyone seemed to have vanished, unplugged their phones, or been instructed to say nothing. The supreme commander and the minister of defence instructed to say nothing? By whom? The government could have done it, of course, or the prime minister. I had agonising stomach pains for several hours. I didn’t understand the orders I’d been given. Aborting the operation went against my experience and instincts. I came very close to refusing to obey. That would have been the end of my military career. But I still had a grain of common sense left. And so we moved all our helicopters and two surface vessels to the Danzig straits. I asked for permission to keep at least one helicopter hovering over the place where we knew the submarine was hiding, but that was not granted. We should leave the area, and do so immediately. Which we did. With the expected result.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘Needless to say, we didn’t find a submarine near the Danzig straits. We continued searching for the rest of the night. I still wonder how many thousand litres of fuel the helicopters used up.’

  ‘What happened to the submarine you had encircled?’

  ‘It disappeared. Without a trace.’

  Wallander thought over what he had heard. Once, in the far distant past, he had completed his national military service with a tank regiment in Skövde. He had unpleasant memories of that period of his life. On being called up he had tried to join the navy, but he had been sent to Västergötland. He had never had any trouble accepting discipline, but he did find it difficult to understand a lot of the orders they were given. It often seemed that chaos ruled, despite the fact that they were supposed to imagine themselves in a potentially lethal confrontation with an enemy.