Ten Swedes Must Die

by Martin Österdahl

  “He was a regular,” said Sofia. “A lost customer. The times keep getting tougher.”

  “Are you planning to tell me what this is about?”

  “Does John have a Swedish cell phone? I need the number.”

  He knew it by heart. Sofia wrote the number in her notebook, but she doubted he’d answer when she tried it. It was probably for a pay-as-you-go phone that was lying at the bottom of Saltsjön at this point.

  “If you find him, I’d like to say a few choice words to him,” said the bar owner.

  “I’ll try to remember that. I think you should contact the licensing authorities in the meantime. As a proactive measure. Tell them about how you’ve violated all kinds of employment and liquor laws here. That might encourage them to think about treating you with greater lenience. As opposed to following my strong recommendation that they close this dump down for good.”

  23

  A group of Japanese tourists was looking in the display window on Köpmangatan. For some reason they seemed to be interested in Harald Lindberg’s painting depicting a little pedestrian bridge over the river Norrtäljeån. A middle-aged man in the group pointed at the sign that had been hanging on the door for more than four years now: “Sorry, we’re closed.”

  Max turned onto Själagårdsgatan and went in through the door that led to his apartment. He walked up the dusty gray stone stairs. He still felt he didn’t belong here, even though they had lived here for more than two years now. It was as though he and Pashie were guests in their own home.

  Four years ago, he’d received the key to the apartment in a folder containing information on assets after a firm called Rigus had called to tell him that Carl Borgenstierna had died and identified Max as his sole heir. What had begun as a hunt for the man whose name Max’s father had pronounced with such hatred had ended with Max inheriting everything that man had owned. Everything but the family coat of arms hanging on the wall in the House of Nobility.

  The inheritance had come in the form of a foundation, the Baltic Foundation, and the foundation’s articles stipulated that he was not permitted to sell this property, which had contained Borgenstierna’s personal residence. Six hundred square meters in Gamla Stan. An antique shop on the ground floor. A universe of unanswered questions.

  Max turned the key in the lock, opened the door, and walked in.

  He switched on the crystal chandelier. He and Pashie weren’t using all the rooms in the big apartment. The furniture in the salons and the bedrooms on the left was still covered with white sheets.

  The walls in the living room featured dado panels of dark-varnished wood. Above the panels was woven wallpaper that featured a flowery pattern in mint, pink, silver, and gold. Between the beams, the ceiling had been painted gray with a pattern of purple lilies. The Borgenstierna family coat of arms.

  On the walls hung oil paintings depicting Stockholm’s town hall and Stockholm Palace; the czars’ palace, Peterhof; and the amber room at the Catherine Palace. There were portraits of aging men with grim expressions and paintings of naked women bathing. A building on the bank of the Neva River caught Max’s eye. The Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg. Carl Borgenstierna’s paternal grandfather had been the Swedish consul in Saint Petersburg decades before the Russian Revolution. It was impossible for Max to resist the feelings the painting triggered in him. The city where everything had almost ended for him and Pashie.

  He opened the heavy double doors that led from the living room into the library. In the middle of the room was a mahogany English desk. The piles of moving boxes standing around it had been moved here after Carl Borgenstierna terminated the lease for the Baltic Foundation’s offices shortly before he died. Max and Pashie hadn’t looked through the boxes. The foundation was dormant.

  He took off his jacket and tossed it onto one of the boxes. Some were marked with a year and a subject, many of them simply with “Foundation.” Others were marked “Beneficiaries,” “Board,” “Wallentin,” “Själagårdsgatan,” “Nautica & Antiques.”

  Max put his feet up on the desk. On his way home from Berga, he’d called Sarah and told her what he’d encountered there. After speaking with Charlie, Sarah had called back. Everything was on ice. No one was answering phone calls. No one at Berga, no one at the unit for Eastern Europe and Asia, no one at the chancellery of the Ministry of Defence. Something was horribly wrong.

  Charlie had told Sarah that the Norwegians had moved their positions forward, together with the British, and gotten a dialogue started with some officer high up in the Russian Navy, a contact that sounded promising. But Pashie’s conversations with the Russian embassy in Stockholm and with her cousin Nadia were worrisome. According to Nadia, the Russian state-owned media were spreading a story that the Kursk had either collided with an American submarine or been fired upon. Accusations that could trigger a third world war if they were justified.

  Max took out his cell phone and called the man who’d contacted him first about all this, early Saturday morning.

  “Hi, Max,” said Hein Espen Hovland.

  “Thanks again for calling me right away,” said Max.

  “What’s happened is just the worst possible thing,” Hein Espen said. “I would have preferred an earthquake.”

  “And no one knows what caused the accident yet.”

  “Or no one wants to say.”

  “Are you still working for the Norwegian Armed Forces?” asked Max.

  “Not exactly.”

  That could mean precisely anything. “So we can speak openly?”

  “I trust you, Max. You know that. And I know you trust me.”

  “It seems the Russians want to blame the Americans.”

  “Nothing new under the sun.”

  “But it couldn’t be that the Americans were really responsible, could it?”

  Hein Espen sighed. “There are a lot of other submarines up there. Not just American ones. British ones, too.”

  “It’s hard for me to imagine that a collision caused the crash, given the advanced equipment the submarines have. And a Russian submarine wouldn’t have been fired upon without a green light from the politicians. Neither the US nor the UK would approve such an act, would they?”

  “In spite of all the advanced equipment, there could be a situation when it was necessary to fire torpedoes, even without approval,” said Hein Espen. “To avoid a greater catastrophe. Such as a frontal collision.”

  Max took out a pen and paper and wrote “Self-defense?”

  “That’s a stretch, but it’s possible. If there was a collision, there should be more than a single submarine lying at the bottom of the Barents Sea.”

  “Yes. If a collision was so forceful that even the Kursk sank, we can only imagine what the other submarine would have looked like afterward.”

  “Like a soda can somebody stomped on,” said Max.

  “What have we missed?”

  Max thought about what Sarah had told him about the meeting she had attended with Charlie, about how the discussion had taken a strange turn because a woman named Anastasia Friedenberga had expressed intense skepticism. Rumors of a new form of Russian aggression seemed to have made everyone nervous, and everything was uncertain.

  “If the Western powers don’t want to save submariners for the sake of doing a good deed, then why should they be so eager to dive down to the Kursk?” Max asked.

  “You tell me,” said Hein Espen.

  “Maybe they don’t want to find something; maybe they want to conceal something? Traces of something that shouldn’t have happened?”

  Hein Espen murmured thoughtfully, “There could be people who think in those terms.”

  “Let’s stay in touch,” said Max. “I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know if you hear something else I can’t read about in the papers.”

  When Pashie got home, Max went to the door to meet her. He kissed her on the cheek and took her hand as they sat down in the kitchen. Only the kitchen, the bedroom upstairs, and the littl
e room they’d furnished as a living room really felt like home.

  The kitchen was a working kitchen with room to cook big dinners, but it only had a little table in the middle with three straight-legged chairs. Pashie sat on one side, Max on the other. They briefly processed what had happened at Sophiahemmet Hospital and then fell silent. There wasn’t anything else to say about it at the moment. The nurse had said they’d have the blood test results in a few days. Keep trying in the meantime. Take advantage of the ovulation we’ve gotten going.

  Max told Pashie what he had seen at Berga.

  “What do you think could have happened?” asked Pashie.

  “I have the feeling it’s something serious. And that it has to do with the state secretary.”

  “Why is that?” asked Pashie.

  “Because the police officer who was in the TV segment about the so-called ritual murder was there,” said Max.

  “Murder, then?”

  Max spread his hands. “Well, possibly. But there’s something else. The police officer I met out at Berga is the police officer who was looking for me four years ago.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “I’m going to be called in for questioning. What if they bring up what happened back then?”

  Pashie looked at him. “They’re not going to do that if they have two murders to investigate, are they?”

  Max shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “Get in touch with them. It’s better if the initiative comes from you.”

  Four years ago Max had decided not to call. Instead he had acted on his own. Now the situation was different, and he knew Pashie was right. It was always better to take the initiative.

  24

  Papanov got two cups out and filled them with steaming hot coffee. Denis stood behind him, breathing in the smell of bitter filtered coffee that had been sitting in the pot a little too long. He looked at the little coin—an old fifty-öre—that lay on the coffee machine’s heating element. Swedes always drank their coffee like this, everywhere, in copious amounts.

  Papanov moved around the shooting range’s kitchen as though he had been there before. Many times. As though he had made the room his own.

  He turned to Denis and nodded at a little table.

  “Nine years ago our country collapsed. Now we’re finally back on the right path. In the intervening years, we lost a great deal of ground and a great deal of influence. I’m sure you’re aware of this.”

  Denis took a sip of his coffee.

  “The Western powers didn’t just stand by and watch,” Papanov continued. “They saw their chance and moved their positions forward. Borders were redrawn, and we could do nothing to keep this from happening. Our institutions were battered, and things have gone badly for many Russians. President Putin is determined to reestablish honor and justice, efficiency and stability.”

  “I am as convinced as you are that he’s the right man to lead the country during this time,” said Denis.

  “Good,” said Papanov. “I know you are. I don’t doubt your conviction.”

  But? Denis felt a large question mark hanging in the air between them. Where was Papanov going with his speech? Denis let the pause pass and waited for him to continue speaking. Despite the fact that Papanov was sitting and drinking his coffee quietly, Denis didn’t feel this was the right time for him to say something.

  “We must help our president,” Papanov continued. “The catastrophe in the Barents Sea is the worst thing that could have happened. It’s a crisis that is going to define his presidency for many years, perhaps for his entire time in office.”

  “I can see that. What can we do here in Stockholm?”

  “Stockholm has always been a central place for us. It’s from here that we take care of the entire Baltic area. Besides annexing land and stripping ethnic Russians of their rights, the Western powers—often driven by the Swedish government—have waged a propaganda war against us, cast us as the bad guy in all European conflicts. We don’t care what other people say about us; that’s not the problem. But people within our own institutions let themselves be influenced and stray from our common road, go their own ways. And that’s never good.”

  Denis took another sip of his coffee. Was Papanov talking about him? Was it he who had strayed from the common road?

  “You have friends in Swedish society, Denis. That’s good. A human being needs friends. One of yours works for an organization that is taking part in the propaganda war against Russia. It is called Vektor.”

  Pashie? Denis swallowed quickly. The beauty from the Black Sea with the curly dark hair. He’d been thinking about her more than he should. Somewhere amid all the doubt Pashie had expressed was a true patriot. She had firm opinions about things. About equality and human rights, which she and Denis felt Russia had a long way to go on. But she would never do anything to harm her homeland.

  Did Papanov know Pashie had called him earlier today?

  “It’s true that I’m acquainted with one of Vektor’s employees. Pashie Kovalenko. A Russian. She contacted me earlier today to tell me that Vektor is trying to arrange a rescue mission to help the sailors on the Kursk. Do you want me to break off contact with her?”

  “No, not at all,” said Papanov. “On the contrary.”

  Denis looked at him, trying to understand what he meant, but he was hard to read. As Papanov took another sip of coffee, Denis noticed a silver signet ring on his hand. The image on it was the Russian eagle, but it had a deviant feature. Instead of the two-headed eagle that symbolized how the Russian state looked both to the east and the west to defend the true Christian faith, Orthodoxy, the eagle Papanov wore had only one head. A head looking to the east.

  “The Kursk matter must run its course. We know that the Swedish police are currently looking for someone, a murderer. My guess is that the female investigator on that case will ask Vektor for help. The help she needs can be found there; she’s crossed paths with this person before. We want to monitor the investigation. So use your contact at Vektor. As soon as you hear anything that is of interest about this case, I want to know immediately. Do we understand each other, Denis Zynoviev?”

  25

  They met in a little interview room in the National Bureau of Investigation building on Kungsholmen. It was late in the evening, but the homicide division was full of activity.

  Sofia Karlsson sat silently across from Max and took a sip of water. She set the glass down on the table next to a folder he assumed contained documents related to the murder investigation.

  Max had wanted to report himself four years ago, but he had reconsidered it. His concern for Pashie had weighed more heavily. Given the condition she had been in after the abduction, she had needed someone to take care of her, and who would have done that if he had gone to prison?

  The days had turned into weeks and then months, and he’d started to believe they were never going to come after him. Charging Max with a crime wouldn’t make anything better. When he had first seen Sofia Karlsson out at Berga, he had wondered whether time had caught up with him.

  “Why did you never call me in?” he asked.

  Sofia twisted her head without taking her eyes off him.

  “No one argued that doing so would have had anything to do with justice,” she said in a low voice. “That’s unusual, but it happens.”

  They fell silent. There was much more to say about what had happened four years ago, but Max sensed that the current investigation had put Sofia under a great deal of pressure.

  “What can I help you with?” he asked.

  “Why were you supposed to be meeting Torbjörn Lindström at Berga Naval Base earlier today?”

  “Is he dead?”

  “I’m not the one who’s answering questions now.”

  In the glow of the fluorescent lighting, he could see thin light-colored strands of hair on her face. Her eyes were bloodshot, tired. Her brown hair was in a bun and there were red marks on the back of her neck, which she m
ust have been rubbing to relieve stress.

  “We were working on putting together a Swedish rescue mission to help the crew of the Kursk,” he said.

  “We?”

  “Vektor, my employer.”

  “Who are the others behind this project?”

  “We’re trying to get the decision makers, including Torbjörn Lindström, to back our plan. Time is tight, and we’re losing valuable time right now. I need to know what’s happened to him.”

  Max took a sip of water.

  “Was Lindström murdered?” he asked.

  “Why would anyone want to kill him?” asked Sofia.

  “No idea.”

  Sofia’s serious attitude indicated that Lindström had been murdered. Max remembered what she had looked like on the morning news. Having the media on her heels like that must make her job hell. No doubt they would be after her even more once they’d heard what had happened to the Defence Ministry’s state secretary. Two murders, a general-director and a state secretary, in the course of a few days.

  “Do you think what happened to Lindström is connected to what the news is calling the ritual murder?” asked Max.

  “There you go again.” Sofia smiled. “You’re not the one asking the questions here. Try to answer mine instead. Why would anyone want to kill Lindström?”

  “If we’re going to get anywhere, you’ll have to show me everything you have.” Max nodded at the folder on the table.

  “I certainly have more than enough about you. You grew up at the outermost edge of the archipelago, where you were homeschooled. Your father died when you were thirteen, your mother a little over ten years later. When you finished your schooling, you did your military service in the Coastal Rangers, were trained as an attack diver, and subsequently became an officer. You were in combat in Bosnia despite the fact that an attack diver shouldn’t have been there. Former military colleagues of yours say you’re addicted to anxiety pills. You left a military career track to sit in an office on Valhallavägen and work on matters of national security, but everyone knows you’re climbing the walls. Your girlfriend, with whom you live, is a Russian woman who was kidnapped in Saint Petersburg in 1996. That same year, your name came up during the investigation into the death of a suspected Russian agent in Stockholm. Shall I continue?”