“It’s Kandinsky, isn’t it?” said Max.
“Yes, it is,” said Sofia.
109
In the hunting cabin’s inner room, they found clothing, makeup, wigs, visa documents, false passports, and a lamination machine that had been used to create fake identification.
Max and Sofia stood side by side next to a large dining room table covered with objects. In the middle was a plastic container. Sofia put on a pair of thin white latex gloves, opened the container, and unwrapped the bundle that lay in it.
“I hope this will answer the question that’s been baffling us,” she said. “The one about Goga Golubkin’s fingerprints.”
In a towel lay a severed hand, fixed in a half-open position as though it had taken hold of something.
“It’s been placed in formalin,” she went on. “So it won’t shrink and rot. With a little greasy cream on the fingers, someone could easily leave fingerprints using this hand.”
Sofia carefully put the hand back and replaced the lid. She took her gloves off and turned a document over using tweezers. On one side was the symbol that decorated the murderer’s back, the eight-pointed cross, the cross of Lietuvens, on which the nationalist symbols had been carefully placed and numbered. On the other was a list of names of people who were to be killed, numbered in declining order from ten to one.
“Ten Swedes were supposed to die,” said Max. “You were right.”
“If we hadn’t tracked him down on the Seaway Eagle, he would have been at the hunt today and would have killed two more men. The regimental commander and Ahlström.”
Max pointed at the remaining names at the bottom of the list.
“Imagine if he had managed to follow the plan all the way through.”
The surnames were well known to everyone who knew anything about Swedish politics during the war. The two individuals who were to be marked with Zalktis, the snake that represented wealth and prosperity, were descendants of Sweden’s wartime cabinet secretary and foreign minister. The tenth and last victim, next to the numeral 1 and the symbol of Austras Koks, the tree of life, bore one of the best-known names in Swedish history.
The Social Democratic Party leader and prime minister.
If the descendants of Sweden’s most highly placed statesmen had been murdered, Swedish society would have been shaken to its foundations. That had been the idea. That was what they’d succeeded in preventing, assuming no one else had taken over for Kandinsky.
“Jesus, Max,” said Sofia. “Can you imagine the chaos this would have triggered?”
Max nodded at her.
The surnames at the top of the list belonged to men who were regarded today as the fathers of the Swedish welfare state. Those names stood for Sweden as much as IKEA and the Volvo Amazon.
If their descendants had been murdered, the media would have revisited this black chapter in Swedish history, every aspect of it, every sacrifice and betrayal required to maintain the peace. That would have opened old wounds at home and damaged Sweden’s international position.
Time doesn’t heal all wounds.
Once they were outside again, Max took a deep breath. He sat down on the ground outside the cabin and leaned his head against the cabin wall. Sofia walked slowly around in circles in front of him with her cell phone pressed to her ear.
What they’d seen inside the hunting cabin had proved beyond a doubt that their theory was correct. The Swedes’ betrayal of the Balts was the motive for the murders. Kandinsky had wanted the world to know what the Swedes had done. And that there had been no just compensation for these sins.
110
Björn Hansen held his little sister’s hand at the entrance to the Stockholm tourist center in Kungsträdgården. They were dressed in the clothes Lisette had given them: he wore the black, white, and gray checkered bow tie and vest, while Lisa wore the blue dress. The clothes fit them perfectly, just as Sarah had thought they would. It was as if Lisette had had recent photographs of the children and had arranged for the seamstresses in Windhoek to tailor clothes to them.
They walked up the steps together, and Sarah was afflicted by a storm of feelings that grew stronger with every step, with every happy jump the children took on their way up to the exhibition. It was the first time in what felt like an eternity that the four of them had moved as a unit, as a family.
They walked among the various objects on display, looking at what children on both sides of the Baltic Sea had drawn and painted. Pictures of beaches and waves and gray factories belching out black smoke. Short texts about nature and biology, about fish living in a sea with a dead bottom. They looked at photographs of school buildings, schoolyards, sports fields, and playgrounds. Choral music came from the speakers. They arrived at a wall on which the children had written words and drawn pictures related to children’s rights.
Pashie should be here, thought Sarah. She had worked on this. Where was she now?
“Excuse me for a moment,” said Sarah. She walked a little away from the others.
She took out her cell phone and called Pashie’s number.
No answer.
As she was putting her phone back in her handbag, she saw her old friend Peter Tillberg from the newspaper Dagens Nyheter. He was talking to another visitor. The other man turned his head and caught sight of Sarah. He was wearing a shiny dark-gray suit and a black turtleneck. His jacket was stretched across his powerful chest. His hair was cut short. His facial expression would have been neutral had it not been for the cold look he gave her.
Sarah turned and went back to Lisette and the children. She remembered Max’s words of warning: someone was in Sweden, someone from the organization that had threatened them four years ago. There was no doubt that the man Tillberg was talking to was a Russian.
Was he Papanov?
Now she just wanted one thing. To get them out of here.
“Hi, Sarah,” she heard from behind her. Peter Tillberg had caught up with her. “Do you have a minute?”
Sarah glanced at Lisette and the children. Björn was pulling Lisa’s arm, probably because he wanted to show her something. She saw the three disappear behind a display case.
“Thanks for your help the other day,” she said.
“Don’t mention it. Are you done with Anastasia Friedenberga?”
No, I sure as hell am not, thought Sarah. But she didn’t want to share what had happened to Charlie with anyone outside their circle, particularly not with a journalist.
“Who’s the man over there, the one you were talking to?”
“He’s from the Russian embassy. Do you want me to introduce you?”
Sarah shook her head.
“I heard you tried to get the URF to the Barents Sea in cooperation with Berga,” said Peter. “It’s too bad that didn’t work out.”
“It’s the Russian sailors and their families you should feel sorry for. If you want something to write about, you can write about how the Russian military treats the families of the dead. We’ve launched a support program to help them press claims during the legal aftermath.”
Peter hummed, and Sarah understood that he wasn’t particularly interested. Not newsworthy. Not juicy enough.
“The news agency TASS has just sent out information to the effect that the Russians have admitted the accident was caused by one of the Kursk’s own torpedoes imploding. An old, dangerous technology they’re still using to fire their practice torpedoes, one the West abandoned long ago. Apparently a lot of new international support intended to help the Russians eliminate old weapons technology is now being discussed.”
Sarah thought of the conversation they’d had at Vektor at the beginning of this hellish week about General Lebed’s argument on 60 Minutes. This was exactly what Lebed had been looking for. More money from the West. Sarah shrugged.
“Well, that’s that, then, right?”
“You haven’t gotten a new sensitive question to work on in the last few days?” he went on.
“What would
that be?” said Sarah.
Peter nodded toward a corner of the exhibition space where they could talk undisturbed. They stood at the panorama windows and looked down over Kungsträdgården, where busy preparations for Mir 2000 were in progress.
“I’ve had some damned strange conversations,” said Peter. “With a source who felt there was no choice but to turn to the media to get help.”
“And what did you do?”
“Published an article. The editor rejected publication of a follow-up article.”
“What does this have to do with me or Vektor?” asked Sarah.
“Do you remember my article last week about a mysterious signal registered at the Russian embassy?”
The hairs stood up on the back of Sarah’s neck. She remembered the article. Something about it had seemed strange. She had dismissed it as pure speculation. Once the exercise in the Barents Sea had begun, there had been plenty of speculation. The seriousness in Peter’s look and tone made her feel uneasy. She remembered what had seemed so odd about the article.
“There are no leaks from the National Defence Radio Establishment,” she said.
Peter coughed. A good journalist doesn’t reveal his sources.
“I dismissed the article as nonsense,” said Sarah.
“You weren’t the only one.”
“What is this about?”
“A so-called stress signal. You know what I mean by that.”
The Soviet embassies had all been equipped with a system that received stress signals. If there was some kind of acute situation in a certain country, a signal was sent to warn the local delegation.
“But here in Stockholm? Last weekend? Could that have had to do with the Kursk?”
“Because the Kursk is lying on the bottom of the Baltic Sea, that appears unlikely. No one knows what kind of signal this is. But it’s a warning of something.”
Sarah swore. For a brief moment, she’d been able to experience a feeling of normality with her family. Now she wanted to go back to work even though it was a Saturday evening. She thought about Charlie, cursed the fact that she couldn’t call him and talk all this over. She thought of casus belli. The strange room with the entrance inside Charlie’s closet. The documents from London and Washington. The Norwegian project. A possible collision between the Kursk and the USS Memphis. A long conversation between the presidents. Russia admitting that an imploded torpedo caused the sinking of the Kursk, and the West promising new economic support to help them with their old, dangerous weapons.
A stress signal?
“Okay, what else did your source say? If we’re going to take a look at this, we need something more, something that will make it possible for us to narrow down our search.”
The journalist grimaced, glanced left and right.
“My source says the signal is counting down to a certain point in time.”
“What point in time would that be?”
“It’s not possible to say exactly,” said Peter. “But it’s sometime tomorrow.”
111
People rarely had the strength to lie after they’d seen what it looked like on the other side, thought Papanov. Kandinsky had been no exception.
It was quiet at Stadsgårdskajen. Papanov had taken off his tight-fitting suit jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his turtleneck. They had searched Kandinsky’s car carefully, but the search had been fruitless. None of the things Papanov needed had been in it.
Everything they’d left behind in the hunting cabin would keep the Swedish police busy for a while. But not forever. They were looking for the car, too. They were a step behind, but it wouldn’t take them long to locate the red Opel now that it was here in the city, right in front of their noses. It wouldn’t be good if they found it too quickly and arrived at the same conclusion—that there was nothing in it. It would be better for them to remain uncertain. Then he could retain his advantage.
“Max Anger,” he whispered to himself, out toward the choppy black waves on the water in front of him. “If we don’t coordinate our last efforts, the consequences could be catastrophic.”
Two men meet in the gulag. They have both been deprived of decades of their lives. Their hatred knows no limits. Combined, their knowledge and insights are vastly destructive. Information exchanged between internees in the old Soviet camps had been beyond Soviet control. It was lucky that so few had managed to survive. Now the same problematic situation had arisen in the former Soviet prisons around the collapsed empire, where people of the bloodlines of the gulag veterans were serving long sentences. Prisoners were exchanging state secrets. And the new states, which felt little love for Mother Russia, were running the prison systems.
Papanov turned to the men who were silently awaiting his instructions.
“Burn the car.”
112
It was late when Max and Sofia approached Stockholm. Sofia put on a CD of songs from an old American musical; apparently she needed to clear her head.
“Do you always listen to music like this?” asked Max.
Sofia glanced at him. “Is it bothering you?”
“No, but maybe you should try something your mama didn’t listen to?”
Sofia shook her head and stared straight ahead.
Max sank into his own thoughts, looked out through the car window as the lights of the big city appeared before them and finally interrupted the darkness of the August night.
The August curse, he thought. When will it end?
When Max had entered the hunting cabin and seen Kandinsky, he’d felt sure it was the work of Papanov. Papanov had finally located Kandinsky and had cut off the transport. Then Papanov’s people had taken him to Papanov’s own hiding place. Why? Had it just been to show the Swedish police that Kandinsky was the guilty party? To eliminate the suspicions surrounding Russian agents?
But that didn’t make sense. Stopping Swedish police officers and threatening them didn’t help end rumors of increased Russian aggression. It didn’t do anything to improve relations, either. So what was this actually about?
Why was Papanov in Sweden?
Papanov had said that Goga Golubkin had died in the attack at Centrs, and Max had believed that his arrival had been about something as simple as vengeance for the death of an agent.
Kaldenis of DISS had said that the surveillance cameras showed Kandinsky going against the stream of fleeing people, into the burning shopping center, after the explosion had occurred. Had Kandinsky done so to confirm that Golubkin, the target of the attack, had been killed? Or had he gone in so he could cut off Golubkin’s hand and stick it in a plastic container and then use it to leave misleading fingerprints at murder sites? Or had Golubkin had something else? Something Papanov was now looking for?
What had happened in the hunting cabin had not been done to silence Kandinsky. On the contrary. The purpose had been to get him to talk.
What secret had Kandinsky been forced to share with Papanov during the last minutes of his life? That was the question.
His cell phone rang. Sarah.
“Where are you?” she asked.
Max told her what had happened in the forest between Kumla and Örebro.
She took some deep breaths.
“I’m stuck at the office. I got new information from Tillberg at DN that scared me. Do you remember the article a week ago about a stress signal sent to the Russian embassy?”
“Yes,” said Max. “What’s it about?”
“No one knows, but someone who knows about this signal is damned nervous about it, and no one is paying attention to his concerns, so he’s talking to the press. He thinks the signal is on a timer and will stop sending its warning sometime tomorrow.”
“Did Tillberg say who this is?” asked Max.
“No. He won’t reveal his source. But I found out something else I think you and Sofia are going to want to hear, given where you’ve just been. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Charlie and his woman.”
The woman who lie
d to my face, thought Max. Anastasia Friedenberga.
“What have you found out?”
“Guess where she went to school.”
“Where?”
“The Engelbrekt School.”
“In Örebro?”
“Exactly, in Örebro. The school that became a field hospital for a little over half a year. And listen to this. Her father died young, and her mother remarried. Her second husband was named Kent Isaksson. He was a hunter. The head of the hunting society at the Kvismaren nature reserve.”
“You mean Anastasia Friedenberga is Anna Isaksson?” said Max.
Sofia startled next to him.
Max closed his eyes. They had met at the field hospital, Anastasia and Ludwigs Ozols. They were from the same country; both were driven only by the fight for independence. A fight in which they were still both engaged. The Vilnius Group. A woman at the embassy cooperating with extreme nationalists? Prisoners who had been convicted of murder, and former Nazi legionaries. A bombing in Riga to focus attention on Latvia’s desire for continued independence, to kill a Russian agent and acquire something valuable he’d had in his possession. Then they had done everything they could to blame the bombing on the Russians, and to make it appear that they were behind the murders.
“She was the one who wrote the complaint against Sweden,” said Max. “Anastasia knows where Ludwigs Ozols is.”
113
Per Carpelan was alone in his office on Kungsholmen. What Sofia had told him over the phone about what she and Max had found in the hunting cabin was both serious and informative. The police officers who’d been threatened had come back to Stockholm and were going through crisis counseling. Any hunt for the kidnappers would be the responsibility of the Swedish Security Service because Russian involvement was suspected. Their prisoner had been tortured and executed, probably by the people who had liberated him. Someone had taken the law into his own hands in the most brutal way and at the same time left behind all the evidence investigators would need to tie Kandinsky to the murders. They had found Golubkin’s hand and established that it had been used to leave the fingerprints. In a freezer compartment in the cabin’s refrigerator, technicians had also found the explanation for the DNA evidence: a plastic tube that contained frozen blood from Golubkin. In a way, most aspects of the case had been explained.
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