Ten Swedes Must Die

by Martin Österdahl

  But it hadn’t been a suitcase with a bomb in it aboard the Kursk. It had been a man who could disarm such a bomb. The backup.

  Max slammed his hand into the closet door. It couldn’t be over. There must be a way.

  “What’s in the suitcase?”

  “See to it that you get as far away as you can.”

  “I’m not going to run and hide. I found Ozols. And I have his things.”

  Max could hear Papanov typing on the other end. After a brief pause, he was back.

  “Okay,” said Papanov. “There is a way. If you follow my instructions exactly. But it isn’t going to happen without conditions from my side.”

  “Okay,” said Max, looking at Sofia. “What are your conditions?”

  When Max had ended the call and packed the objects into the backpack as Papanov had instructed him to, he said to Sofia, “Call the police boat. Tell them to meet us at the ladder in three minutes.”

  122

  Max and Sofia ran along Skeppsbron as fast as they could. At the foot of Strömbron, people stood packed together. They stretched, pushed in between each other, cameras lifted high, as though they expected to see a celebrity, a member of the royal family. Max wondered what information the public had received other than that the streets were blocked off and the traffic was being rerouted.

  Max and Sofia pushed past them and ran across the bridge. When they saw a uniformed police officer, Sofia quickened her pace, ran up to him, and pointed at Max. The officer held the tape up to let them pass.

  They passed the statue of Charles XII and turned and headed toward the crowd-control barriers decorated with Mir 2000 bunting. Max glanced at the big countdown clock in the middle of the park.

  Twenty-three minutes.

  Max had never seen the most central square in Stockholm this empty. He hadn’t seen one human being since he and Sofia had left the bridge that led over to Gamla Stan.

  As they approached the lighting control console in front of the stage, Max saw a vehicle that looked like a military armored car. He thought of the bomb man he had met in Carpelan’s office earlier that morning. But he didn’t see a man in a big bulky space suit anywhere. No door of the armored vehicle opened. Thus far, everyone had agreed to Papanov’s conditions. He wanted free passage out.

  Twenty-one minutes.

  They crawled under the console table, and Max took off the backpack.

  In the middle of the space under the console lay the suitcase.

  The roar of an engine broke the silence. Max leaned down to get a better view of the area around Saint James’s Church and the personnel entrance to the Royal Opera. Soon he saw a black van approaching. It stopped at the location they’d agreed on. Its sliding door opened, and eight men wearing black uniforms and balaclavas stepped out. Then Papanov emerged, wearing a black bomber jacket. He looked around, spotted the lighting console, and started running toward Max and Sofia.

  The men in black came with him and formed a human shield around the console. One of the men’s backs turned to the side, opening a passage for Papanov. Papanov crouched down and knelt beside them. He nodded briefly to Sofia and turned to Max.

  “Take out the brass case.”

  Max opened the backpack and did as he’d said.

  Papanov released the two clasps that had held it shut. In it lay a slip of paper on which there were long rows of numbers. Papanov placed it in front of him.

  He nodded and mumbled something to himself. Something he could read in those incomprehensible rows of numbers.

  His arms shook as he lifted the front part of the suitcase about twenty centimeters.

  “Hold it in exactly this position,” he told them.

  Max and Sofia took hold of opposite sides of the suitcase. Its weight surprised Max. It felt as heavy as an adult human being.

  Papanov looked at the slip of paper again. Checked his watch. Max could see what the watch face displayed: a countdown timer. Eighteen minutes.

  Papanov studied the handle and the clasps carefully. Put his right hand on the handle. He wrapped his fingers around it and gripped it hard. Looked at Max and Sofia.

  “Can you both keep completely still?”

  They nodded.

  “Do you believe in God, Max?” said Papanov. “If so, now would be the time to ask for forgiveness of our sins.”

  “I don’t believe in God.”

  Papanov nodded.

  “Neither do I.”

  He quickly twisted the handle to the left. When he’d turned it ninety degrees and it was pointing upward, he let go of it hurriedly, as if it had suddenly become red hot.

  He leaned back and exhaled. Looked at Max again and nodded.

  “You can set the suitcase down now.”

  Papanov put his fingers on the two knobs under the lock of the suitcase. “I’ve always had a hard time with that business with clockwise and counterclockwise. It’s fifty-fifty. Let’s hope for the best.”

  Max tried to figure out whether he was joking or not. As usual, Papanov wasn’t providing any clues.

  He pulled open the clasps. The suitcase was unlocked.

  Seventeen minutes.

  Papanov slowly opened the suitcase, locked the lid in an upright position.

  The first thing Max saw was the blinking red timer at the center of the suitcase’s bottom edge. It confirmed what they’d thought.

  Sixteen minutes remained.

  Inside the suitcase, two cone-shaped metal tubes lay with their necks pointing toward each other, their heads connected by a pipe that bore two black markings.

  A bomb intended to make both the vault of the heavens and the ground collapse.

  The terrorist’s suitcase.

  Papanov picked up the brass case once again. Where the slip of paper had lain was a key. It must have hung around Goga Golubkin’s neck.

  Papanov slid open a cover on the panel with the timer, and a red button became visible. A blue light came on above it.

  He slid open a similar panel on the opposite side of the timer. Behind it was a lock.

  Fifteen minutes.

  Papanov picked up the key and inserted it into the lock. Nothing happened.

  Max looked at Sofia. She had closed her eyes and was sitting with her hands clasped in front of her. The sound of his pounding heart was almost numbing. So much had been left undone. He hadn’t had a chance to talk things over with Pashie. He didn’t even know where she was. This couldn’t be the end.

  Extremely cautiously, Papanov twisted the key counterclockwise a quarter rotation.

  The blue light went out.

  The timer stopped.

  Papanov laid the slip of paper and the key back in the brass case. Put it in the backpack and put the backpack on. Then he closed the suitcase.

  Papanov looked at Max. Nodded. Beads of sweat had formed under his hairline. He crawled out from under the console.

  Max stared at the suitcase in front of him. But that lasted just a brief moment. Two of the black-clad men quickly crawled in under the console, took hold of the suitcase, and drew it out carefully.

  Max and Sofia did nothing to hinder them.

  When they emerged from under the console, the door of the black van was sliding shut, the vehicle already disappearing around the corner where Saint James’s Church stood.

  As suddenly as they’d arrived, they were gone.

  Max looked up at the sky, his gaze fixing on the banner above the big stage. The rays of the August sun burned him like hot tears.

  He began slowly walking across the empty square.

  123

  All crew members from sections six, seven, and eight have moved down to section nine; there are twenty-three people here. We feel ill, weakened by carbon dioxide…In this section the pressure is increasing. If we tried to reach the surface, we would not survive the pressure. We wouldn’t last more than a day. All personnel have gathered here in section nine. We have made this decision because none of us can get out.

  It’s too d
ark to write. It feels as if there is no chance that we will be saved. Let’s hope someone reads this. Here is a list of crew members from the other sections who are now in section nine and will make an effort to get out. Greetings to all. No need to despair.

  Captain Lyomkin

  Pashie was standing against the wall between a man and a woman at the back of the conference room. Her hand lay on her belly to calm it. The man next to her was muscular and had a long scar under his chin. He had not yet been granted admission to the Russian bar association, but Pashie had chosen him because she knew she could trust him. Ilya was Max’s friend and had helped rescue her in Saint Petersburg four years earlier. He had a few years of law school left. Along with his studies, he was completing an internship at the prominent Moscow law firm representing WoRM in connection with its lawsuit against the Russian government.

  The woman was Pashie’s cousin Nadia.

  Nadia had read her Captain Lyomkin’s notes, his last words and thoughts. The military representative who’d called Lyomkin’s widow had only read her this part of what Lyomkin had written. No one believed she would ever receive the letter in full. Presumably it contained information the authorities didn’t want the world to know about.

  For a little over a week, the world had speculated about whether anyone could still be alive on the submarine. But the official Russian report published yesterday stated that everyone on board had died within a few hours after the accident. According to the report, the knocking sounds had come from some automatically operating machinery that had continued to function in the submarine.

  Pashie, Nadia, and Ilya had come to the Vidyayevo naval base’s officers’ club and cultural center in the Murmansk region, together with about five hundred people who had been close to one or more of the Kursk’s crewmen. Because Vidyayevo was a restricted area, there were no Western media present; only the Russian television station ORT had representatives in the room. Heavy gray rain clouds hung outside, and the broken asphalt around the turquoise-and-white building was covered with puddles. The tension in the room heightened as a convoy of cars pulled up outside. Everyone knew who it was.

  Vladimir Putin, the president of the Russian Federation, was dressed entirely in black: a black suit and a black shirt buttoned all the way up. Unaccompanied, he walked up onto the stage and stood in front of a large black drapery, behind a podium that didn’t conceal much more than the buckle on his belt. Pashie couldn’t help being surprised by what he looked like in reality, their new president. He wasn’t particularly tall, nor was he as powerfully built as some pictures suggested. On the contrary—he looked small, almost wasted. Above all, he looked young.

  When he began, he spoke to the people in a manner that wasn’t typical of her country’s leaders. Whether it was his personality in general or the seriousness of the situation that made him speak as he did, she didn’t know. But when he was delivering his introductory comments, he tried to sound like one of them. It was obvious that the seriousness of the occasion had made an impression on him.

  But later, as he sensed the increasing anger in the room, he put on a mask as protection against the rage. He spoke analytically of the problems they were having with identifying the causes of the accident and—with a seriousness Pashie didn’t buy—assured those present that he would do everything in his power to put those responsible for the navy’s failures on trial. But his expression and his body language said something different.

  The truth would rest at the bottom of the Barents Sea forever.

  The president stuttered out his prepared statement and had to repeat himself when booing, whistling, and screams drowned out the sound of his voice. People stood up—women with tears running down their cheeks. They screamed at him. Poured out their accusations and hurled their sorrow and hatred at him. They threw all the questions they’d been carrying around with them at the young man standing at the front of the room. Their new leader.

  The president tried to establish his authority by making chopping motions with his hand as he spoke. When someone mentioned that the widows could expect to receive only one thousand rubles, which corresponded to twenty-five US dollars, Putin was quick to promise that the families would get special compensation equaling ten annual salaries, which was to say seven thousand dollars. Ilya squeezed Pashie’s hand and offered her his familiar shrug and a significant glance. A good start. But only the beginning.

  Though the president had offered more than anyone anticipated, the protests did not diminish, and he became more and more visibly frustrated. Pashie began to feel queasy. She would have to sit down soon.

  What was happening in the room in front of her didn’t feel like a victory. On the contrary. Even Vladimir Putin would be either broken or hardened by this. She wondered what would happen to the greater openness and democracy that had been slowly developing in her country.

  When the president turned the floor over to Deputy Prime Minister Klebanov and a group of burly men in black leather jackets escorted him out, a real lynch-mob feeling developed in the room. Pashie could feel in that moment that the relative openness her country had achieved in recent years would disappear.

  Klebanov guaranteed that the Kursk and the dead sailors’ bodies would be recovered. That did not calm the families.

  A woman with short blond hair stood up and screamed at Klebanov. Her strong voice silenced the protests of the others, and people focused on her and on the deputy prime minister’s attempts to calm her.

  “How much longer are we going to have to put up with this?” screamed the woman. “They’re lying in a tin can for fifty dollars a month. Do you have children yourself? I’m sure you don’t!”

  Guards and officers from the navy surrounded the woman. A slender woman in civilian clothes—but wearing a beige coat like the other guards—pushed through to get close to the screaming woman. Pashie could see that she was holding a syringe. She held it behind the screaming woman’s back and tried to get under the woman’s clothing with it while the guards held the woman’s arms. The woman fought to break free. With her face turned toward Klebanov on the stage, she screamed, “Take off your medals!” A moment later she gasped and fell backward, but the men standing around her quickly caught her. They took her out of the room with great haste.

  Pashie seized her friends’ arms.

  “Come on,” she said. “I don’t feel well—I have to get out of here.”

  124

  “In our line of work, we celebrate our greatest victories in silence. You know that, Sofia. There isn’t going to be a party because we ended this nightmare.”

  Sofia nodded at her boss. They were back at the National Bureau of Investigation. The debriefing process had begun. It was going to take a while.

  She felt completely exhausted; there was nothing she would rather do than go over to the Amaranten hotel and check into a room. But the man she wanted to celebrate with wasn’t hers. And never would be. She didn’t know how much her boss sensed of what was going on inside her, but she knew what he was trying to get her to realize. He had said it to her before: it was time to move on. And for her that was true on many different levels.

  “What did Schiller have to say?” she asked.

  “He has a lot to answer for. I don’t think he’ll be causing much trouble for us in the future.”

  Carpelan allowed himself a smile. Sofia found herself unable to reciprocate.

  “He said that during the preparations for Sweden’s official apology for the extradition of the Balts, a man from Latvia was invited to be among those who came to Sweden to receive the apology, but this man didn’t come. Instead, he sent a letter that contained both an accusation and a threat.”

  “The same accusation that was in the book De vi vårdade, which was published two years earlier,” said Sofia. “When Anastasia Friedenberga realized that Ludwigs Ozols had survived his years in Siberia and planned to seek revenge. As a Latvian diplomat, she couldn’t very well publish the book under her own name.”


  “Because the official apology was presented at a reception at the palace with the King and the prime minister present, the Swedish Security Service took the threat seriously. Knowledge of the letter was restricted to a small circle of individuals around Schiller.”

  Sofia nodded. The state secretary from the Ministry of Justice had gotten information from all possible sources—from MUST, FRA, the Swedish Security Service. The first murder had set off warning bells. Ozols’s threat was being carried out.

  “I think Schiller did what he thought was best for Sweden,” said Carpelan. “He thought it was worth any price to keep the public from becoming aware that there are individuals and groups so angry about our actions during the final phase of the Second World War and its aftermath that they are prepared to kill. What Sweden did destroyed many lives.”

  “And the first interviews with Anastasia?” she asked. “Has she started talking?”

  “Yes. She’s told us that in the work camp in Siberia, Ozols came in contact with a scientist who helped construct those suitcases. Apparently the Russian organization he’d worked for had betrayed him. By telling Ozols how such a suitcase worked, he got a kind of revenge.”

  “Wow,” said Sofia. “Do you expect me to put that in my report?”

  “No,” said Carpelan with a smile of resignation. “I’m going to go over that with the Government Offices in person. But you and Max can expect a call from the prime minister. You’re real heroes.”

  Sofia nodded but didn’t manage a smile.

  The wheeled suitcase Carpelan had packed for his long weekend in London was still standing next to his desk. The culture supplement from the Sunday Times with the ad for The Lion King was lying on top of it.

  “Has your family come home?” she asked.

  “I’m going to the airport to pick them up. But I don’t expect great enthusiasm at Arrivals.”

  Sofia herself had an evening with her father in the cottage on Zinkens Väg to look forward to. She could probably expect some enthusiasm there, although she wouldn’t be able to tell her father everything.