Ten Swedes Must Die

by Martin Österdahl

  “Yes, I have,” she said.

  “Well, some members of the hunting party discovered something worrying, and when I called the police to tell them about it, I was immediately put through to you.”

  Sofia stiffened. She saw her reflection in the restroom mirror, shook her head.

  “What have you found?”

  “Strange symbols carved with a knife were found in a deer stand. Next to the symbols was the number five. Given what’s been in the newspapers and reported on TV, the people who made this discovery were, of course, quite shaken and immediately returned to the regiment. I sent a patrol out to investigate the area. They studied the environment and concluded that a line of fire had been cleared from a nearby pump house to the deer stand. And they found that certain preparations had been made in the pump house.”

  We have him, don’t we? Sofia thought, hurrying back to her office.

  “What preparations were those?”

  “A knife and a branding iron were found. As far as we can judge, the branding iron bears the symbol that was carved into the hunting blind.”

  This sounded just like the work of Kandinsky.

  “Can you describe the symbol?” She dug around in the papers on her desk.

  “It looks like two leaning Ls that together form a cross.”

  Sofia looked at the photograph of Kandinsky’s back, the symbol that was up next. The symbol Max had characterized as “Jumis, the harvest” looked just like the one the colonel had described. Number five.

  “Who was supposed to sit in the deer stand during the hunt?” asked Sofia.

  “I and a man named Stig Ahlström.”

  “What kind of work did your father do?”

  “What does that have to do with—?”

  “What kind of work did he do?”

  “He commanded the regiment at Kristianstad before it was disbanded.”

  Kristianstad, thought Sofia. The Rinkaby internment camp. The symbol of Jumis. The number five. Two victims. That meant a total of seven.

  “What does all this mean?” asked the colonel.

  “The two of you must stay in a safe place until my colleagues arrive.”

  Sofia called the police in Karlskrona and asked them to send cars to KA 2. When she had finished the call, she looked at the cell phone she was holding. She called up Max Anger’s name. Something told her she was going to need his help again.

  100

  Max greeted the guard, showed his visitor badge, and took the elevator up to the homicide division. He walked toward Sofia’s workspace. She was leaning over some documents on her desk. She turned around when he was right next to her.

  On his way here from the hospital, his headache had returned. His left hand was shaking. To steady it, he held on to it with his right hand behind his back. His palm was cold and sweaty.

  “What do you have there?” he asked.

  Sofia held up one of the sheets of paper.

  “Gustav Borg. Once the youngest regimental commander ever in Kristianstad. Known for his unwillingness to compromise. His son was supposed to participate in the regiment’s annual red deer hunt today, along with a certain”—Sofia replaced the sheet of paper with another—“Stig Ahlström, son of Ivar Ahlström, who was a very good friend of the old regimental commander in Kristianstad. Ivar has passed away; he worked in the coast guard at Furusund in Roslagen. He was once convicted of liquor smuggling. The Ahlström family is so-called shipbuilding nobility, but I suppose you’ve guessed the rest by now?”

  “Ivar Ahlström?” said Max. “The old Arholma shipping family?”

  Sofia nodded.

  “Apparently Ivar Ahlström also did something bad in the forties. The son, Stig, didn’t want to have anything to do with his father or anyone else in the family. He’s lived down in Scania his entire adult life.”

  “Liquor smuggling?” said Max. “Old man Ahlström was something of a dictator on Arholma. He must have been cooperating with the Odal defense organization.”

  “The symbol of Jumis and the number five were carved into a deer stand where they were planning on hunting.”

  “Kandinsky was going to take them both at once, decorate them with the same mark. That gives us seven victims. Three remaining.”

  “Do you think someone else has taken over?” asked Sofia. “It’s clear, in any event, that he must’ve had help.”

  Max nodded.

  “Anastasia Friedenberga lied to my face. I visited Charlie at the hospital. He told me she knew he was going to board the Seaway Eagle. If she hadn’t lied, we might have gotten there before Kandinsky attacked him.”

  “Could it be that she’s working with Kandinsky?”

  “If we’re to believe Charlie, she’s capable of anything.”

  “How is he doing?”

  “Not very well.”

  Sofia cleared her throat.

  “You mentioned that DISS said Kandinsky received a visitor when he was in prison, right?” she said.

  “Damn, you’re right.”

  They went to the meeting room. Max dialed the number for Riga and waited to be connected.

  Answer now, thought Max. We can’t afford to wait until tomorrow.

  Sofia moved closer to Max when the policeman’s voice came on the line.

  “You said Kandinsky had behaved in an exemplary fashion during his last four years in prison and that he’d had a visitor for the first time,” said Max. “Who visited him?”

  “Why are you asking that?” asked Kaldenis.

  “Because I don’t think he’s working alone.”

  “We have that information.”

  “Was it a woman?” asked Max.

  “No, it was an elderly man. The police are also looking for him. We don’t have his name because he used a false identity when he visited the prison.”

  “If the police are looking for him, too, that means you have a picture of him, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Could I ask you to fax the picture to this number?” Max gave him the fax number for Sofia’s office at the National Bureau of Investigation.

  “Okay, I’ll do it, but you’ll have to promise me something in return,” said Kaldenis. “I want to be the first to know if you see him.”

  101

  Kandinsky was sitting in a black van, with police officers in bulletproof vests holding automatic weapons on either side of him. On the bench opposite him sat two more police officers who were just as heavily armed. They’d said he was being moved to a safe place. For his own protection. When he got there, the interrogation would continue.

  He bit his lower lip so hard he could taste blood. How had they found him on the ship? Who had managed to find out who and where he was? They had laid out their plan so carefully.

  He looked at the men guarding him. They were big and strong, as Swedish police officers often were. But what did they know about having a real will to fight? What did they know about death? Had they seen how life leaked out of a human being? How human beings’ shades remained even after their souls had left their bodies? It made no difference if people were big and armored. He could shock and frighten them. But right now they had too great a technical advantage. He would have to bide his time and wait for the right opportunity.

  When Kandinsky had gotten into the vehicle, there had been other cars both in front of it and behind it, as though they were going to drive out of the subterranean garage like a train. At first the pace had been slow.

  He knew it was Saturday, and while he sat there bound, he thought of what they had planned for today and tomorrow.

  His red Opel and what lay in its trunk had been taken care of. Now, feverish preparations for tomorrow were no doubt taking place. Fencing, booths, and temporary stalls were being set up; the big stage was being prepared. Kungsträdgården Park & Evenemang AB, which ran the park for the city of Stockholm, had to follow restrictive rules and laws. Given Swedish legislation, it was difficult to carry out adequate background checks. The Swed
ish Security Service was no doubt asking all kinds of questions about this event. Fortunately, the service had neither the right nor the opportunity to carry out in-depth background checks on independent contractors hired for the event. A myriad of underpaid and unknowing people from all the corners of the colorful European continent. Compared with getting into the guard’s hut at Berga, it would be simple.

  He thought of what he’d been told about Kolyma. To the road of bones. The ground there had been harder than the asphalt of Kungsträdgården.

  Some things cannot be forgiven.

  Only one thing brings reconciliation.

  He closed his eyes and imagined the last symbol, the one in the middle of the cross he bore on his back.

  Dievs.

  You are the roof over our heads, the ground under our feet.

  Your rage destroys us all.

  Under the lighting technicians’ console, directly in front of the stage, thirty meters from its edge, the center of where a sea of people will be tomorrow. That was where it would be sitting.

  The suitcase. The one that would blind them all.

  A new beginning for Swedish-Russian relations, indeed.

  Posterity will judge us all alike. We have carried our secret for so many years now. Tomorrow we will finally get to celebrate our victory.

  102

  Sarah opened the door to Vektor with her cell phone pressed against her ear.

  “So I’ll see you at the Stockholm tourist center, at the corner of Kungsträdgården directly across from NK?” she said. “And it’s okay for you to pick up the children and bring them?”

  “Absolutely,” said Lisette. “You can finish working, and I’ll see you there. I’m looking forward to it.”

  Sarah thanked her, ended the call, and slowly put her phone back in her purse. Lisette had really changed. It wasn’t the goodwill she was showing or the way she supported Sarah that surprised Sarah most. There was a new kind of friendliness in her voice, or perhaps an old kind that had come back? Had they spoken to each other like this in the beginning? Before the accusations and the negativity? Before they had started avoiding each other at home, as if each of them were wearing a T-shirt that said “It’s all your fault”?

  You left me. We had our problems, but instead of trying to work them out, you fled to Africa. With a man.

  Sarah hadn’t been to the gym a single time since that day. She was still paying the annual fee every year. She thought her failure to get back into shape had been one of the reasons Lisette had left her. Lisette didn’t desire her anymore, and she’d been open about how when the sex stops, the relationship ends. Parents of small children were experts at convincing themselves it wasn’t like that, but world history was full of proof that they were wrong. Sarah compared it to a time bomb. Every time she put her nylons on, she was still reminded of the candy and chocolate pig-outs that had come with her pregnancies. Rolls of fat lay on top of her soft belly like little shelves; there were little folds that could hide both lint and crumbs from the bread she’d eaten in bed for breakfast. Sarah stood in front of a mirror and pinched her stomach. She didn’t like those rolls, didn’t like that they didn’t disappear even when she pulled her stomach in as much as she could. But until now she hadn’t had the energy to do anything about them.

  She walked away from the mirror and took out the little schedule of gym workout sessions that she kept in the top drawer of her desk. Perhaps she should go to a spinning session in the afternoon?

  Her mind returned to Charlie. The thought of how he’d looked, of the doctor’s words, made her feel sick. She couldn’t stop thinking about what she had seen in the strange room inside Charlie’s closet at the house on Värmdö, or all the circulating rumors about the Kursk disaster. What was it Charlie had been doing? And for whom was he working?

  Robin Molander, the director-general for administrative affairs at the Ministry of Defence, had told them that an American submarine had docked in northern Norway for emergency repairs—the same submarine whose disappearance had been reported, the USS Memphis. He had said the Russians had pictures confirming this. Sarah had contacted Vardø in Norway and asked them to send her the information they had on the seismological readings so she could ask an expert in Stockholm to take a look at them. When she looked at the papers she’d received, Sarah realized she wasn’t going to need to contact an expert. A note on a cover page that accompanied the data printouts from the seismographs said that the first event they registered was now no longer being characterized as an explosion but simply as “a minor incident.”

  She put the documents down and opened the website of the TASS Russian News Agency. She shivered when she read the day’s top stories.

  “With Norwegian divers and the British LR5 submersible on board, the Seaway Eagle arrived at the accident site.”

  “Physical evidence of the earlier presence of another submarine at the site has been found. Russian divers have brought up a piece of wreckage from a foreign submarine.”

  “President Putin again had an hour-long conversation with President Clinton.”

  Sarah closed the Russian webpage and continued her search via various American and Norwegian pages. She found an article about the report the Norwegian embassy in Moscow had supposedly given Russian authorities, claiming that the American submarine had sought emergency assistance so it could make repairs. The article claimed that personnel at the Norwegian embassy did not speak Russian well and that they had confused the Russian word for food with the Russian word for repairs. According to this article, the sole reason the American submarine had docked in northern Norway had been to replenish food and drink provisions.

  Sarah pushed her chair back from her desk. They had meant food but had said repairs? That was the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard.

  What the hell is going on? she thought. Is what the Russians are saying true? Is NATO trying to cover something up?

  103

  Back in Sofia’s office, Max flipped through Anna Isaksson’s book.

  “There isn’t much about the author herself in the book,” he said. “Have you found out anything about her?”

  “My investigators didn’t find much. No hits in directory information. No bills, not even for electricity or water. But we did find a property registered in her name. A shack on its own way out in the sticks.”

  “Did you check with the cemetery?” asked Max.

  Sofia smiled crookedly.

  “We checked that she hasn’t been declared dead, yes.”

  “And the hospital where she worked?”

  “The Örebro field hospital was not a hospital in the usual sense. When refugees began streaming into Sweden, the authorities activated a previously prepared contingency plan. Among other measures, the medical board had to organize hospitals for refugees quickly. In Örebro, they used a school. Evidently that created a lot of problems and led to protests from the parents. Most of them thought the refugees should have been put somewhere else.”

  “Isn’t it always like that?” said Max. “What else do we know?”

  “According to a catalogue of field hospitals at the National Archives, the Engelbrekt School started teaching children again at the beginning of the semester after New Year’s Day. The field hospital was closed on December 31, 1945. By that point the field hospital had accumulated over forty thousand care days. Patients came and went and were moved around all the time. Some died and were buried, and today the locations of some of the graves are unknown. Personnel were called in on short notice and then disappeared quickly. Red Cross, all kinds of volunteers. It was chaos.”

  “And the name Anna Isaksson? Nothing more on her?”

  “No. All hospitals in the Örebro region have been checked: the university hospital, Karlskoga Hospital, and Lindesberg Hospital. None of them ever, before or after, had an employee named Anna Isaksson.”

  “So maybe she wasn’t really an orderly?”

  “No, she probably wasn’t. Not during peacetime, at
least. She could just as well have been a schoolteacher or a jazz singer.”

  “Maybe she was the one who wrote the legal complaint against Sweden?”

  “Yes, maybe she was a lawyer?” Sofia glanced at him, winked.

  “Did you check with the tax authorities? Miscellaneous declared income?”

  “None since 1945.”

  “Then I’d put my money on jazz singer.”

  They were interrupted by a knock at the door. Sofia got up and took a sheet of paper from a colleague. She looked at it and nodded, then came back to the table.

  “We’ve gotten a fax from DISS. This is the man who visited Kandinsky in prison under a false name.”

  Everything came together when Max saw the man’s face.

  The visits had begun four years ago and ended at the time of Kandinsky’s release this year. Given what this man had experienced, it was incredible that he was still alive. The leader of the Baltic revolt at the Rinkaby internment camp. The man who’d been the acting harbormaster and administered the secret activity of the Odal defense organization in Tallinn.

  The hunt for every drop of Swedish blood.

  “This is Ludwigs Ozols,” he said. “Despite the long period of time that separates this picture and the one in the book, there’s no doubt it’s the same man.”

  Sofia nodded. “Let’s go.”

  She picked up a car key from the table.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To the property that’s registered in her name. She’s our best chance of getting hold of Ozols.”

  104

  Kandinsky opened his eyes just as the van turned off the highway and drove more slowly onto a small, winding road. The men received a message via the communication system in their helmets. They looked at each other until one of them nodded and answered.

  The van slowed down, finally stopped.

  Had they arrived? Kandinsky tried to establish eye contact, but the man across from him just shook his head and put a hand up. Sit still.

  The men listened to a new headset message. As if in response to a signal, they took the safeties off their automatic weapons. The van backed up, not as it would leave a parking space but at full speed. After only about ten meters, the driver stomped on the brake.