“You should wear that when you’re doing your rain dance,” said Lisette.
“You mean when I’m dancing for a living?” said Björn.
He put the mask on and began dancing in front of them.
Sarah couldn’t help laughing. My little Einstein. Lisette looked at her again, watching her reaction. How long could they go on like this without saying anything to each other? Maybe this was what people did when they were on their best behavior for the sake of the children. One held one’s tongue and stayed on the safe side. If they refrained from saying anything, they wouldn’t wound each other. Even though neither of them had moved since Lisette sat down, it seemed as though she were coming closer and closer. Sarah thought she could feel vibrations coming off her. They were stirring up something in Sarah. If she didn’t leave soon, they’d be sitting here until school was over for the day. And what would happen then?
“I’d like the check, please,” said Sarah, trying to get the waiter’s attention.
“You all go ahead and go,” said Lisette. “I’ll take care of this.”
“No, I’ll pay. You’ve just drunk water.”
“Please. I want to pay.”
Sarah realized she’d been thinking about it the wrong way. In this instance, it wasn’t about who had the most money.
“Thanks,” she said. “The things you got the children are really nice.”
Lisette looked from the children to her.
“Thanks for letting me see them.”
“How long will you be in Sweden?”
“I’m going back in two weeks. I’d like to see you all again.”
Sarah pointed at her watch and Lisette stood up. She helped the children put their presents back in their cloth bags.
“Mama, may I take this to school with me and show it to everyone?” asked Björn.
Sarah nodded.
“Come on, now. We have to go.”
She turned toward Lisette one last time.
“Thanks again.”
“Don’t mention it. And, Sarah, think about it, all right? And call me if you’d like to get together.”
Björn and Lisa looked at her, smiling.
Sarah sighed.
“There’s an event for families at the Stockholm tourist center on Saturday,” she said. “It’s an exhibition of various things children have created for Mir 2000, a new project to promote cooperation between—”
“What time is that?” Lisette interrupted. “I’d like to come.”
61
“Is Sofia here?”
Per Carpelan looked up. Seve from the crime analysis unit was standing in the doorway.
Something in his manner made Carpelan feel that his long weekend in London was in danger. The tickets to The Lion King had been purchased, the taxi to Arlanda Airport prebooked.
“No, she isn’t,” he replied. “Why do you ask?”
“I think you’ll appreciate hearing this immediately.”
Seve stepped into his office and closed the door behind him. “We have a match via the international department.”
“Fingerprints and DNA?”
Seve nodded.
“Let’s hear it.”
“The man we’re looking for is currently sought by police forces in several countries. Suspected of the murders of various politicians in different parts of the world. According to Latvia’s anti-terror unit, DISS, he was last seen in Centrs. Just before the explosion.”
Shit, thought Carpelan. He had to make an effort to remain calm and collected.
“Go on.”
“His name is Goga Golubkin, and he is a Russian citizen.”
“And who is he?”
It was as though he could hear it in the intake of breath before his colleague delivered the next sentence. Now it’s pulling away. Away from their unit, away to the people who always seized the glory and the budgets. If he left town for a vacation, he probably wouldn’t have a job when he came back.
“He’s an agent working for what’s called the mobile division for special operations.”
When Carpelan was alone in his office again, he realized his worst nightmare had become a reality. There was no reason to pursue anything else, neither at work nor privately. It was the Russian track that was firming up after all, the worst imaginable scenario in this horrible murder investigation. A Russian agent who was killing prominent Swedes and was being sought in connection with similar murders in other countries. He had gotten his colleague to promise that this would stay between them for the time being. He took out his cell phone and called Sofia. If news of this spread within the police, to the military, to the press…Good Lord.
The thought was dizzying.
62
On the steps of the subway station, Max felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. He looked at the screen and saw it was Sofia Karlsson calling.
“We’ve got a match,” she said.
“So the perpetrator is a known criminal?”
Sofia took a breath.
“Max, what I’m going to tell you now stays between us. Okay?”
“Of course.”
“The person we’re looking for is a Russian agent named Goga Golubkin. We found his fingerprints and DNA at the scene of the crime.”
Someone bumped into Max from behind. He had stopped abruptly on the steps. Hurrying commuters passed him on both sides.
“Max? Are you still there?”
“That can’t be right.”
“The match is confirmed as practically a hundred percent reliable. We’re restricting this information to a very small circle of people. I’m really not supposed to be breathing a word about it.”
“A man like that—” Max looked around to see whether anyone was watching him, but everyone was just rushing toward the buses leaving the Slussen station.
“A man like that would never be so careless, Sofia. He wouldn’t leave behind a sign to be interpreted, let alone an entire work of art.”
“Goga Golubkin was seen in the Centrs shopping mall in Riga,” said Sofia slowly.
The buses snorted before they drove off. The smell of cigarettes was everywhere—both the warm, sweet smell of recently lit tobacco and the stale smell of butts lying in pools of water on the ground. His father had always carried the smell of cigarettes into every room; it had been in clothes he’d worn, chairs and sofas he’d sat on. It had persisted years after his death.
Max crossed the street, went over to Stadsgårdskajen and walked up the hill to the parking lot at Skeppsbron where he’d left his car. He was still holding his phone pressed against his ear, but all he heard was Sofia’s quiet, expectant breathing. People walked toward him from the big Finland ferries, pulling wheeled suitcases behind them like lifeless dogs. The small wheels rolling along the asphalt made a sound like a passing storm.
His father hadn’t been killed by smoking, nor had he committed suicide. The car that had crashed into the mountainside at high speed when Max was only thirteen years old had not stopped functioning on its own. A mechanic had destroyed the car’s brakes. A Russian agent had been responsible for that. And now they were again hunting a Russian agent.
“I’m on my way to a meeting,” Sofia finally said. “We’ll have to talk later.”
“Tell your colleagues that if a Russian agent had wanted to kill them, he would have poisoned them without anyone noticing. They would have died painfully without ever suspecting they’d been poisoned. No clues would have been left. And you would never have found him.”
63
Pashie was leaning against the car when Max approached her. She was watching him, and he wondered how much she sensed of the maelstrom of thoughts and feelings storming through his body.
“I didn’t want to wake you this morning,” he said.
She nodded, looked away, at a seagull sitting on one of the big bollards on the quay. With the glittering water behind it, it made for a perfect postcard picture.
“I’m sorry I ended up getting home so late,” he
said.
“I didn’t feel like sitting there waiting for a man who never comes home,” said Pashie.
“I understand that.”
“You know, it was going so well, Max. You’d started working out again with Feliz at the club. Gotten help with getting everything out of you that you’d been carrying around.”
Carrying around? He’d told Dr. Axelsson that he would tell Pashie everything. But this was the wrong time.
“You’re completely caught up in these murders now, aren’t you?”
She looked at him with those eyes that could see into all his hidden corners.
“I’m sorry. But I have to help the police with this.”
Pashie turned away. “I’ve heard back from the doctor.”
Max nodded. “What did they say?”
“It’s the infections and the steroid treatment in Russia. I’m not completely infertile in a clinical sense, so it could be worse. The doctor doesn’t want to specify a probability in terms of a percent chance, but it’s not particularly likely that I’ll become pregnant. These days around the time of my ovulation are very important.”
He laid a hand on the arm she was holding across her stomach.
“Does it hurt?”
“It’s a little worse today. Could be because of the wine I drank yesterday. But I don’t know whether I have the strength to go on with the hormone treatment—my entire body feels like a balloon filled with water.”
Max pulled her close.
Pashie murmured into his chest. “What he did to me, that bastard—I’m going to be reminded of it every damned day. We’ll have to live with it for the rest of our lives.”
“We can’t go back. We can only go forward.”
Pashie moved away from Max.
“The only thing that consoles me a little when I think these thoughts is that you killed him.”
“Pashie!”
“It’s true. And I guess that really says it all as far as how damned messed up I am.”
A group of people were walking toward the car parked next to Max’s. He took Pashie’s hand and opened the door for her. Then he got behind the wheel.
“I’m still mad at you,” said Pashie, drawing a hand across her eyes.
Max nodded. “I heard you worked wonders yesterday with the collection for WoRM. Everyone is talking about it.”
“The armed forces are going to have to pay.”
Max started the car and began backing out.
If that gene really strikes, and I develop the disease, will I notice it? thought Max. Does a person with dementia see the changes in his or her own personality? Or is it like with blood pressure? Do you not notice anything at all until something truly breaks?
He turned off at Stadsgården and drove toward Värmdö. They sat in silence the entire time until they reached the driveway in front of Charlie’s house.
“You haven’t asked me where I was last night.”
Max glanced at her. He hadn’t given it a thought.
He parked the car in the drive. Pulled the hand brake and turned to Pashie.
Before he had had time to say anything, she said, “Sarah’s already here.”
She opened the car door and got out.
64
Sarah was standing in front of Charlie’s light-gray door with a big picnic basket in her hand.
“Okay, everybody ready? When he opens the door, we’re going to sing to him.”
She rang the doorbell. After the sound of the bell faded, only silence came from within the house. She tried again. Still silence.
“Hold this,” she said, handing the basket to Max.
She walked around the house to the back, where the grounds sloped down to Strömma Canal. Max and Pashie followed her. Charlie was nowhere to be seen among the apple trees, gooseberries, and raspberry bushes. Sarah went over to the garden shed. Charlie always left a key in there, under a flowerpot in a corner. No one seemed to be moving behind the windows of the house. They went back around to the front, and Sarah put the key in the lock and turned it.
There was a note on the rug in the hall. Instructions for the cleaning woman. He would be back next week. Had he left? Without telling them?
“Shit, Charlie,” said Sarah.
Max furrowed his brow. Was there a scent? Either they weren’t alone or someone other than Charlie had been there quite recently. He stood completely still in the hall, listening for sounds while Sarah and Pashie looked in the kitchen and the living room. He thought he could hear a quiet buzzing from the upper floor.
Max set the picnic basket down on the hall floor. He ran up the stairs and into Charlie’s bedroom. Took a deep breath, caught a whiff of a woman’s perfume. But there was something else, too. Next to the window with a view of the garden stood a bouquet of flowers in a vase. He walked over to it and read the card.
“Happy big birthday! Your Tasenka.”
The bed was unmade. Not just unmade. There were two comforters and four pillows.
Charlie? Max thought and smiled to himself. Do you have a girl?
Charlie K seemed to have more exciting things to do than eat finger food with his colleagues. Perhaps it had been silly of them to think he wouldn’t have plans to celebrate his seventieth birthday. Or that there weren’t other people close to him who would have made plans. Max was on his way back down to the others when he passed Charlie’s closet. It was from the closet that the buzzing sound was coming.
He opened the door. There was a fax machine on the closet floor with a new fax in it. Max bent down and looked at the machine. The network cable led deeper into the closet. Max followed it to where it disappeared under a wall. He put a hand against the wall and pushed carefully. It gave way and opened. A secret door.
Behind the door was an office containing a desk, a filing cabinet, and a gun cabinet.
Max stepped into the room. On the desk lay documents in neat stacks. From Norwegians, Englishmen, and Americans. Everything seemed to have to do with the military exercise in the Barents Sea.
He remembered what Charlie had asked him for. Contact information for Hein Espen, information Max had subsequently given him.
Max turned around and saw Sarah and Pashie ducking into the closet. When they were standing on the threshold of the secret door, Sarah looked at him.
“What the hell is this?” she asked.
“A secret office,” said Max.
“I don’t know whether we’re breaking any rules here. But it feels like when I went into Borgenstierna’s secret room and saw all those pictures of…”
“My paternal grandmother?” said Max.
“Yes. You know, that feeling you get when you go from thinking you know a person to thinking you have no idea who that person really is? It’s like a hole opening up in the floor.”
“There’s a vase out there with flowers in it,” said Max. “With a card from somebody called Tasenka.”
“Tasenka?” said Pashie. “A Russian?”
Max only knew of one person called Tasenka, but this could hardly be the same person.
Sarah shook her head.
“A lot here doesn’t seem right,” she said.
This room and what was lying on the desk indicated that Charlie could be working for others. If he was somehow connected to a foreign power’s intelligence organizations, what did that mean for Vektor?
Was it as the Russians had claimed? Was Vektor a covert branch of a Western intelligence service?
65
The first thing Sofia Karlsson saw when she stepped into Carpelan’s office was a little beige wheeled suitcase standing next to his desk.
“Empty seats at The Lion King tomorrow?” she asked.
“Only one,” said Carpelan. “Jessica took off on her own with the kids. She never gave me a chance to wish them a good trip.”
“I’m sorry. I know you were looking forward to it.”
“Wrong time for a vacation. What the hell was I supposed to do?”
“That’s how it
is to be the chief of police. What’s this meeting you wanted me to come to?”
Carpelan’s expression changed in a way Sofia wasn’t able to interpret.
“You’re going to meet State Secretary Schiller.”
“Is he here?” asked Sofia.
“Yes. He’s waiting for us over there.” Carpelan pointed at the row of meeting rooms.
Sofia held up her hands.
“I have to tell you something before we go over there. There’s a credible interpretation of the murders that doesn’t necessarily point to Russia. Max and I have made quite a bit of progress with the symbols. And he’s very skeptical about the assumption that the killer is a Russian agent.”
Carpelan stopped. “We have a match for fingerprints and DNA that belong to a Russian agent. If you have any doubts, you should keep them to yourself for the time being.”
For the time being? What did that mean? Carpelan seemed almost nervous, which was unusual. Did he share the doubts she and Max felt but feel he wasn’t in a position to admit it? What kind of pressure was being put on him and Tomas Schiller? And from how high up was that pressure coming?
Tomas Schiller reached for the pump thermos on the table as they entered the conference room.
“Welcome,” he said.
As he poured coffee into a cup, the sleeve of his snugly tailored suit jacket rode up a little. He wore a narrow navy tie with a double Windsor knot.
Sofia felt her cell phone vibrating in her right front jeans pocket. Schiller looked at her with cold light-blue eyes from behind his round glasses, and she realized this wasn’t the right time to take out her phone.
She sat down and turned away from the overfilled wastebasket, which contained old coffee grounds and orange peel.
“So we’ve sent out an international request for help?” said Schiller.
“Yes,” said Carpelan. “A colleague came into my office earlier today with information that the fingerprints and DNA matched a certain Goga Golubkin, a Russian citizen who is the object of an international manhunt and the focus of a current investigation in Latvia. According to the Latvians, Golubkin is a Russian citizen who belongs to the mobile unit for special operations.”
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