Ten Swedes Must Die

by Martin Österdahl

  So they were there. Why were they spying on the Russian exercise?

  Max sat up when his TV displayed images of the USS Memphis and the USS Toledo, two large reactor-powered submarines that constituted the core of the American attack-submarine force. According to the newscast, a British source who wished to remain anonymous claimed that the Americans were in the area to monitor the exercise and any weapons tests the Russians might carry out with the Shkval supercavitating torpedo.

  It was the super-torpedo Pashie had spoken of, the torpedo the Russian crews hadn’t been adequately trained for, the torpedo those crews feared. Of course that was why the Americans were there. To study the torpedo that could move through the water faster than any other.

  Global news organizations had tried to get more information from the Americans, but their only official comment was that they were attempting to establish contact with representatives of the Russian Navy.

  Max’s cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He answered without taking his eyes off the news report.

  “Where are you?” asked Pashie. “We’re waiting for you.”

  “Would anyone like some dessert?” asked Malin Marklund as she got up and began clearing off the table.

  “Let me help you with that,” said Pashie. Holding a stack of plates, she followed Malin into the kitchen.

  The apartment was on Torstenssonsgatan in Östermalm, just a block away from Strandvägen and the most expensive condominiums in the city. In the beginning of her difficult period of recuperation after coming home from Saint Petersburg four years ago, Pashie had kept to herself. For a long time, she kept reliving the torture to which she’d been subjected, afraid that she might be abducted again. She didn’t trust anyone and preferred not to leave home in the evenings. Watching her now as she helped clear off the dinner table in a well-to-do Swedish home, Max felt his chest filling with warmth. She seemed self-confident again. She was back. For real.

  Pashie had met Malin in the changing room after a workout almost a year and a half ago, when she happened to overhear Malin talking on her cell phone. After Malin had ended her call and noticed Pashie’s curious look—and after a brief moment of tension—she’d told Pashie that she and her husband were unsuccessfully trying to have children. Pashie told Malin that she and Max were going through the same thing, and Malin immediately offered advice. Talked about exercise, nutrition, and the menstrual cycle. Pashie listened carefully, as if she were attending a presentation at work, and made mental notes.

  During the time they’d been friends, Pashie had been tossed back and forth between hope and despair, had been gladdened by Malin’s friendliness and positive attitude but frightened by the significance of her words: “I’m a human being, not a machine with a timer.”

  She’d almost had to force Pashie to go to the doctor in the beginning. Pashie had told Malin she had developed “white coat syndrome” during her stay at the hospital in Saint Petersburg. Against her will, her body seemed to stop performing the moment she set foot in a hospital or saw someone wearing scrubs.

  “More wine?” Ola Marklund asked from the other side of the table. “Shall I open another bottle?”

  They had already gone through three. Max nodded at Ola.

  “Sure. Thanks.”

  Ola padded into the kitchen. Max could hear Pashie’s and Malin’s murmuring voices coming from there. No doubt they were talking about Pashie’s meeting with the shaman. He knew she’d told Malin that she’d booked it.

  Max went to the hall and took his cell phone from his jacket pocket. No messages. Nothing from Sarah or Charlie. He wanted to hear more from Hein Espen—to find out whether the Norwegians had learned anything more about what had happened during the Northern Fleet’s exercise. Briefly, he considered calling him.

  Max caught sight of his reflection in the hall mirror. His eyes were bloodshot. He’d had too much red wine.

  Ola looked through the bottles in the wine cooler while Pashie and Malin went into the little room Malin and Ola had furnished six years ago. Before the first of their five catastrophes. Max knew what was coming when he rejoined the others, and he braced himself for it. The evening will be over soon, he thought. It’s a matter of a few more hours. A few more bottles. Then we’ll be sitting in a taxi, on our way home.

  “Max?” Pashie called. “Come and take a look at this.”

  He went and stood in the doorway of the nursery. Pashie was sitting on the apricot-colored wall-to-wall rug, next to a crib painted white. She waved him over. In her hand, she was holding something attached to the empty bed.

  “You press here, and it plays nursery rhymes from all over the world.”

  Max squatted down and laid his hand against her cheek. It was warmer than usual, heated by the wine, the conversation, and the feelings. For the first time since he’d arrived here late, she smiled at him; her smile reflected a witches’ brew of conflicting emotions.

  “How the hell do they find the energy to keep trying?” she asked quietly.

  Max said nothing, just shook his head.

  “This silly thing. This of all things actually made me feel something.” Pashie put her hand to the corner of her eye. “Have you ever heard this one? I think it’s from somewhere in the Baltics, but I heard it when I was a child, in Russia. It’s one of the most beautiful songs in the world.”

  The little music box played a melody.

  Max took her hand.

  “Yes, I have,” he said. “Maj-Lis, my teacher on Arholma, was a boat refugee from Estonia. She sometimes sang it. It’s called ‘Aija zuzu.’”

  7

  Sofia Karlsson was leaning against her car, waiting for the crime-scene technician, Benjamin Thornéus, who was still with the medical examiner and Claes Callmér’s body. Sofia wasn’t surprised the medical examiner was going to the trouble to examine the body thoroughly at the scene of the crime instead of simply carrying out the autopsy at the coroner’s office. This was no ordinary case, as Per Carpelan had said, and the medical examiner wanted to make sure he didn’t miss any evidence he could glean from the environment where the deed had been done. The combination of the victim’s identity and the killer’s method had made the killing a national concern that Sofia knew would develop into a perfect storm.

  The car door was open, and the stereo was playing a CD her father had given her this past spring when she’d turned thirty-three, the soundtrack from a movie starring Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby. Bing’s deep baritone voice managed to take her away from the shithole she found herself in, to a world and a life that were different from this. It had really been her mother who’d been interested in old American music. Since her death, the music had been a way for Sofia and her father to keep her present. The illusion of a life that was better than one’s actual everyday life—that was the source of the old musicals’ strength, her mother had said. Creating that illusion was the whole point.

  It had been a long day for everyone. Sofia had completed a forensic-medicine training program to learn the basics herself, but she had realized that a person needed to have a particular attitude to spend entire days taking shoe imprints and looking for liquids and fibers from bodies and clothing. An attitude she didn’t have.

  Sofia had worked with Thornéus many times before. He stayed out of the pissing contest that went on among the forensic crime experts who competed for room on the interview sofas of morning TV shows. Thornéus was only interested in getting at the story behind each individual case. That was why she felt he was dependable, one of the very best, and that made him worth waiting for even though it was past midnight. Because this was a special case, Sofia had asked Thornéus to drop all his other work until it was solved. He would lead the work in the lab and be her contact person for all forensic questions.

  Benjamin Thornéus closed the door of the building behind him. As usual, he was wearing brown trousers with broad red suspenders over a blue denim shirt. Some styles didn’t look good on any man.

  “High Society?” he
asked, pointing at the car.

  “Close. Blue Skies,” said Sofia. “What does the ME say? You know I don’t have time to wait for a complete forensic autopsy.”

  “No. I understand. I saw a journalist here earlier. That was fast. But you know I can’t tell you when he died yet.”

  “Yes, but I was hoping for a guess. Did the dismemberment take place afterward?”

  Thornéus shook his head.

  “You should wait for the report, but I’m pretty sure he was alive when he was cut in half.”

  Sofia had to swallow. What the hell was this murder about?

  “And the carvings on his forehead and under his Adam’s apple?”

  “I believe the inscription in his forehead was also done before he died.”

  “Why do you believe that?”

  “The doctor says the body shows signs of extreme stress. A type of stress we wouldn’t see if he’d been killed first.”

  “What kind of signs?”

  “For example, he had bitten down on a molar with enough force to break it.”

  Sofia furrowed her brow. Peeing one’s pants was one thing. That was quite common. But biting a molar to pieces? What kind of torture could make a human being do that?

  “He wanted the victim’s last minutes of life to be as filled with terror as possible,” she said. “Why was that? After all, he was going to die anyway.”

  “I don’t know anything about things like that,” said Thornéus. “But I know enough about forensics to reach one conclusion: I don’t think you’re going to solve this mystery with the help of the natural sciences alone.”

  Sofia smiled crookedly. That wasn’t what she wanted to hear. She remembered Carpelan’s warning that the markers would trigger speculation. That she should ignore such speculation and focus on facts.

  “So what do you think?”

  “Most murders are committed in an atmosphere of hysterical chaos, with both the perpetrator and the victim experiencing terror and anxiety. The approach we see here suggests the killer acted with precision and coolness.”

  “And what conclusion do you draw from that?”

  “The perpetrator prepared well in advance of the murder, and he wanted to send a message.”

  Sofia nodded. “Any clues despite the precision?”

  “It’s too soon to say,” said Thornéus. “My team is collecting material we’ll have to analyze in the lab.”

  “On a scale of one to ten, how careful would you say this murderer is?”

  “We’re dealing with someone who knows what he’s doing. But if we find something at the lab, we can run it against the fingerprint and DNA databases, and if we’re lucky, we’ll soon know who he is.”

  Optimism was another of Thornéus’s qualities she appreciated. A murderer could only be found in the databases if he had been a suspect before and had provided fingerprints and DNA material to Swedish authorities. She doubted he was in there. She was getting a better and better idea of why her bosses and the government officials were so worried.

  Arholma, May 1945

  The spring night laid itself across the landscape in front of him, the cliffs and treetops still lit by a reddish-yellow glow from the west. To be sure he would avoid detection, he lowered his boat’s sail and rowed himself over the last stretch of water to the rocky beach. He knew the bay was called Skvallerhamn. He had never set foot here before, but he knew the island’s people so well he had learned their language. But he didn’t know how they would receive him.

  With the cold water of the Sea of Åland coming up to his knees, he used the last of his energy to pull the boat in and haul it up onto the beach. His journey across the Baltic from Estonia had taken him twenty-four hours. He had waited until the last minute, chosen his opportunity carefully, and gotten past all the Soviet vessels prowling the Baltic without having a single shot fired at him.

  “Ahlström?” he called in the direction of the dark primeval forest that lay beyond the beach.

  The islanders always kept an eye out for strange vessels or the patrol boats of their own police, he knew. Ahlström was the name of their leader, a man he had done business with when he was working at the harbor in Tallinn.

  He heard quick footsteps on the forest path. A swinging lantern approached. He stood up straight, tucked his shirt into his trousers, and smoothed his uniform.

  Soon two men emerged from the forest. He didn’t recognize them. They were young, hardly more than boys, scouts sent to keep watch. He was sure they had never been among the crew of the Triin or in any other gang of smugglers he had gotten to know in Tallinn. One of the young men was armed with a rifle. The other one, the one holding the lantern, came closer so he could see the emblem on his uniform.

  They led him to a boathouse on the cliffs of the island’s northernmost point. It was surrounded by sea buckthorn bushes, junipers, and short pines. Inside was a little table with four chairs. Behind the table, a fire burned in a cast-iron stove.

  “Wait here,” said one of the men.

  Once they disappeared, his exhaustion caught up with him. He moved the table and chairs up against one wall to make room for himself in front of the fire.

  His body was trembling when he lay down in front of the fireplace. His thoughts returned to two summers earlier, when the Red Terror had first encircled the Gulf of Finland. He thought he could hear the tumult of voices, motor vehicles, and salvos of shots. He smelled gasoline, oil drums full of burning rubber tires, tobacco smoke, and cordite. He saw the men who set down the bottles of Swedish liquor next to the people leaving for Sweden—heading, with the help of Germany, toward freedom and away from the war. The most secret agreement between Sweden and Hitler’s Germany. The Swedish-German cooperation that guaranteed free passage to Estonian Swedes out of Tallinn’s harbor. In a Viking ship with a swastika on its sail.

  That was when he had seen her for the first time. Rebeka, the woman who had turned his world upside down.

  “This is the boat to Sweden, isn’t it?” she had asked.

  He had taken a step closer to the young woman. Had been attracted to her. He’d gotten so close to her that he could smell her scent.

  “Why are you asking about that?”

  “I think a friend of mine has gone there. What papers do people need to get on board?”

  “A membership card showing that one has at least twenty-five percent Swedish blood.”

  Now he heard the cabin door open, and he lifted his head. The man who entered was short. He wore a fisherman’s attire: gray overalls that buckled at the shoulders. He held a hunting rifle alongside his body. He had seen this man move on deck, in and out of the hold, and knew he was as quick and slippery as a weasel.

  Ozols got up from the floor and sat down on one of the chairs.

  “What are you doing here, Ozols?”

  “My turn to visit your turf, Ahlström. This time it’s not liquor I need from you. And I don’t have any human cargo with me.”

  Ahlström pulled out a chair and sat next to him. His family had lived on Arholma for generations, had been one of the island’s proud shipbuilder families, and still controlled most of what went on there through the landowners’ association.

  “You can’t stay here.”

  Ozols knew which way the wind was blowing; he knew the fortunes of war had shifted against him and his comrades. The Swedes no longer wanted to admit the existence of the Odal defense organization, the cooperative agreement between the Swedish government and Nazi Germany. No one was better at interpreting events and switching to the winning side than the Swedes. But going back was not an alternative. He might just as well ask to borrow the rifle Ahlström had lying across his lap and put the barrel in his mouth. Where could he run to? The whole Baltic Sea was on fire.

  “I have family here,” said Ozols. “I want you to help me.”

  “How do you think I can do that?”

  “You know who she is. You saw us at the harbor in Tallinn.”

  Ozols stood up
and opened the jacket of his uniform.

  Ahlström pointed the rifle barrel toward him but left the gun on his lap. He looked at the Iron Cross affixed to the jacket’s breast and at the lightning bolts on the collar, which had flashed in the light from the fireplace when Ozols reached into the inner pocket.

  Ahlström pressed the barrel of the rifle to Ozols’s wrist. With a slow movement, he pushed up the sleeve of Ozols’s uniform.

  “Where is your fine silver bracelet, Ozols?”

  “I’ve lost it.”

  Ahlström looked him in the eye for a long time. Finally he nodded, and Ozols felt the rifle move away from his wrist.

  Ozols took out the picture of Rebeka, the only one he had. Held it up in front of Ahlström.

  The smuggler raised his eyebrows.

  “Rebeka was with you on your last journey across the sea with the Triin, so you should be able to find out where she is,” said Ozols. He laid his hand on Ahlström’s shoulder. “Shortly before you cast off with her at Tallinn last fall, she gave birth to our son, whom I have never seen. I have to meet him if it’s the last thing I do. I am here to find out where he is.”

  SUNDAY,

  AUGUST 13

  8

  “I just spoke with Robin Molander, the Ministry of Defence’s director-general for administrative affairs,” Charlie was saying.

  Sarah rolled over in bed with her cell phone against her ear. She pulled up the blind at the head of the bed and squinted so the strong morning sunlight from across Kalvfjärden wouldn’t blind her.

  “The crew of the Pyotr Velikiy has found the Kursk at a depth of one hundred eight meters in the Barents Sea,” Charlie continued. “They’ve picked up underwater sounds that seem to be knocks on the hull.”

  The Kursk, the unsinkable submarine.

  To lie there in a metal tube over a hundred meters below the surface of the pitch-black, ice-cold sea, knocking in hopes of attracting help. Sarah imagined the tumult and panic among the men on board. Poor bastards.