Ten Swedes Must Die

by Martin Österdahl

  “Perhaps you could all launch into ‘Circle of Life’?” she said. “That might be appropriate after all this.”

  Carpelan laughed.

  “Go home now, Sofia,” he said. “Hakuna matata to you.”

  125

  Sarah had driven up onto the Essingeleden highway. Her thoughts were racing. She pushed the accelerator to the floor to drive those thoughts from her mind. To get away from her memories of Charlie and his disfigured skull, from the person who’d called to say that her board chairman, friend, and mentor was no longer alive, that she would never get to talk to him again, never put her arms around him and inhale the scent of his Paco Rabanne.

  Without Charlie, she and Vektor lacked a fixed point, someone to lean on when there was a need for that. She had never before felt so lonely.

  She just wanted to get home. To her children.

  The car’s engine was revving high, and she was far over the speed limit. She had made it past the Tyresö Centrum shopping center in under twenty-five minutes and was well on her way to the smaller roads that would take her toward the southern side of the peninsula and her pretty house on the Kalvfjärden shore.

  She parked the car and took a few quick steps toward the front door, rang the doorbell to announce her arrival, and put the key in the lock.

  “Hello?” she shouted.

  The house was completely silent. Lisette’s jacket was hanging on a hook in the hall. Drinking straws stuck out of three pastel-colored plastic cups spotted with O’boy chocolate-milk mix. On the table lay Lisette’s cell phone and wallet.

  Sarah remembered the storm of feelings that had assailed her when Lisette’s cell phone had rung in the Italian restaurant in Tyresö Centrum. She had wondered who had called. Had felt sorrow over not even having the right to ask.

  She reached for the cell phone and checked the latest calls. Lisette had tried to call her three times. Those were the only calls she’d made today. The call she’d gotten at lunch had come from a number that wasn’t registered as a contact. Could have been from anyone, maybe even a telephone salesperson?

  Sarah opened the wallet—behavior she actually found to be shameful, undignified, and completely forbidden in any context. Behind credit cards and paper money, she found photographs of Björn and Lisa, of Lisette hiking on the savanna with clients among the dunes of the Kalahari Desert, a rifle in her hand.

  Sarah blinked away tears. She hated herself for it, but she had to look at the last photographs, too.

  A man with his arms around another woman. The tears were streaming down her cheeks now. This was the same man she had found a picture of before they’d had their catastrophic fight, the one that had ended with Lisette simply leaving. But the man was married; the couple in the picture were man and wife. They must be Lisette’s friends.

  Did this mean Lisette hadn’t left her for a man? Had Lisette said what she’d said to hurt her? Or to protect her feelings?

  She couldn’t remember it all anymore. What had actually happened? What was it that had driven them apart?

  The last picture was one of Sarah. She was lying on the sofa and looking up at Lisette, who had gone to the kitchen to get something during a commercial break. Her face was like a girl’s. Her smile the most natural thing in the world. She remembered that evening as if it had been yesterday.

  Sarah stood up and put the wallet back where she’d found it.

  The first thing she saw in the bedroom was Lisette’s black-and-white jumpsuit—the one that emphasized her fit figure and suntanned skin—which was hanging on the chair by the bed. On the floor lay a game board and leftover pieces and cards: Afrikan Tähti, Star of Africa.

  The ceiling light was off, but one of the bedside lamps was on, and it cast a warm yellow glow over the pile of bodies that lay intertwined under the single blanket.

  Sarah sat on the edge of the bed and dried her tears. Lisette was lying on her back with her arms outstretched like a Christ figure, with one of the children sleeping deeply against each breast. In the perfect, secure calm she had always wished for them to experience. Sarah laid a hand on Lisette’s hip, felt the warmth coming from her.

  126

  Sofia Karlsson pulled open the door of the garden cottage and was met with the smell of frying food and the sounds of Frankie Avalon’s “Bobby Sox to Stockings.”

  “Perfect timing!” said her father.

  He was standing at the little range in an apron. He laid fried eggs on two plates along with fried liverwurst and potatoes.

  “I heard it on the radio. You saved many people today.”

  He hugged her tightly.

  “You don’t need to say anything about it. You have no idea how proud I am of you.”

  “Thanks, Papa,” said Sofia. “I’m as hungry as a wolf.”

  “Did you bring beer?”

  Sofia nodded and pulled two low-alcohol beers out of a 7-Eleven bag.

  “Ah, Falcon Bayerskt. Good stuff!”

  “I brought something else, too,” she said.

  “What’s that?” he asked, smiling curiously.

  She went over to the CD player and switched off the music, ejected the disc. From the bag she took out the compilation CD Absolute Music 33 and inserted it into the CD player. She pressed Play.

  “What is this?” asked her father.

  Sofia turned the CD case over and read from the back.

  “Aqua. ‘Cartoon Heroes,’” she said.

  “It sounds horrible.”

  Sofia started laughing. She walked up to her father.

  “Maybe we’ll get used to it? I think Mama would have liked it.”

  “You think your mother would have liked this?”

  “It’s been more than eighteen years now. We never liked her old music before. I think she would have liked us to move on.”

  127

  The bedroom smelled of dead flowers. No one had been in the room for several days. Max looked at the unmade bed. Two comforters were tangled together. The depressions in the pillows left by two heads were clearly visible. Max went over to the vase that was standing in the window niche, turned over the card hanging from one of the wilted stalks.

  “Happy big birthday. Your Tasenka.”

  He opened the closet door wide and entered the hidden room.

  The gun locker was unlocked. Had Charlie known that he was in danger and wanted to have quick access to weapons, or had he simply been careless? There were so many questions, and Max would never get the answers. In the gun locker, there was a hunting rifle and appropriate ammunition, which dovetailed well with who Charlie had been. But the Walther PPK sitting next to it was more difficult to explain.

  Would the police examine this room? Max wondered. As a component of the investigation? Charlie was dead, and the police now knew who the perpetrator was and what the motive had been. Surely it was over now? Or would the police take an interest in Charlie’s life and work and investigate Vektor?

  On the desk lay a stack of paper. Max took a close look.

  According to the official Russian government commission, the explosion on board was caused by a collision with a “massive external body” that has not yet been identified but is estimated to have had a displacement of 700-800 ton-meters and was traveling at approximately six knots (a higher speed than the Kursk’s at the time) at a depth of 20-25 meters. The Pyotr Velikiy, which was the first vessel to discover a second object on the seafloor, also noted the presence of green-and-white rescue buoys on the water. Russian buoys are red and white. Neither the commission nor the Russian authorities have yet published this information. Via our own sources, we have been able to confirm that all external masts as well as the periscope on the Kursk were extended at the time of the accident.

  Max dropped the documents. Why had Charlie been sitting in this little room with this kind of privileged and classified information? With a Walther PPK in his gun locker?

  The last information was particularly remarkable. Why did a submarine lying at a d
epth of 110 meters have its periscope and its communication masts extended? That must mean the submarine had surfaced before the accident occurred. To communicate with someone? At relatively great depths they could communicate only using extremely low frequencies—a clumsy, slow system. Closer to the surface, it was possible to communicate using higher frequencies and to use an underwater telephone. Did the Kursk surface to receive a call?

  If so, what had that call been about, and who had made it?

  He recalled what Papanov had told him.

  “The second one drew his last breath at the bottom of the Barents Sea.”

  Had Papanov been in contact with the Kursk? Had they surfaced to take a call from him just before the accident?

  It wasn’t only Russian sailors who’d been buried at the bottom of the sea.

  The truth had been buried as well.

  Perhaps that “massive external body” had been the USS Memphis? Maybe that was why no one had hurried to rescue them?

  The document was signed “Charlie Knutsson” and had been sent to a British fax number. Presumably in London.

  Charlie boy. Who were you, really?

  MI6, the external branch of British intelligence?

  He thought of the meetings at Vektor, of the attempts to involve the URF and Berga, of how Charlie had asked Max for contact information for Hein Espen in Norway. Of how Max had given him this information without hesitating. Of how ready Charlie had been to go for the idea of getting Berga to recover the bodies. And when that hadn’t worked out, he had contacted Hein Espen. Charlie would have done anything to get out to the site of the accident.

  We helped them with their cover-up.

  Next to the stack of papers lay a fax message. It was from Peter Tillberg at Dagens Nyheter. On the cover sheet: “Article for your review and fact-checking in accordance with our agreement.”

  Max turned to the next sheet. “According to reliable sources, the Russian embassy in Stockholm has received information about a mysterious signal…”

  It wasn’t someone at FRA who’d been Tillberg’s source. It was Charlie.

  Darkness had fallen by the time Max had finished loading the entire contents of the desk, the filing cabinet, and the gun locker into the trunk of his car. He was sitting behind the wheel to drive back to Stockholm when his cell phone, on the seat next to him, vibrated. He looked at the screen. The call was from an unidentified number. He put the phone to his ear.

  “So those were his demands?” the prime minister said after Max had told him about his discussions with Papanov before the denouement in Kungsträdgården.

  The black van had driven directly from central Stockholm to Barkarby Airfield, where a Hercules plane had been waiting with its ramp lowered to the runway. Papanov’s vehicle had been able to drive on board without stopping. A little more than an hour later, the plane would land at the requested address, which was known only to Papanov and his men.

  Max suspected that the plane wouldn’t land at any of the official military sites in Kaliningrad or outside Saint Petersburg, but he kept his theory to himself.

  “This suitcase that lay hidden in Sweden for decades,” said the prime minister. “Who are the people, exactly, to whom that suitcase has been returned?”

  A paramilitary organization that calls itself Ivanovich, thought Max. An organization that flows in and out of the Russian state apparatus like an invisible hydra.

  “Let’s hope we never have occasion to find out,” he said.

  “As a result of my conversations with Per Carpelan, I’ve realized that we’ll need to make a number of changes,” said the prime minister. “New times demand new methods. New ways of cooperating for the police, the Security Service, the military, and people working in the gray areas in between. I hope we never have to experience something like this again. But I know it will be extremely valuable to have people like you among us if we do.”

  Was that a job offer? The feeling of unease that had begun with his discoveries in Charlie’s house persisted. He had never wanted to run another country’s errands. All he had ever wanted to serve was Sweden.

  Words his father had once said came to him. “There are things we always must defend and fight against,” he had said. “At all times, in all situations, at any price.”

  Riga, April 1996

  From his seat in the visiting room, Ozols could see two guards bringing Kandinsky through the corridor. Each held one of his arms, bracing him in such a way that he was forced to walk bent forward. Ozols knew this position all too well. It was how prisoners had been led down corridors in the old Soviet Union. Apparently this hadn’t changed, despite the fact that the union of terror no longer existed.

  Ozols had been told that the men inside the prison walls had killed a combined total of more than three thousand people. An average of five per prisoner. But they were not all murderers. Here there were cannibals, pedophiles, and terrorists. For sixteen hours, starting at six o’clock in the morning, they were not allowed to sit. Cameras saw to it that the prisoners followed these rules. Each inmate’s cell was searched every fifteen minutes. The guards had a hard time calling them human beings. They preferred dogs.

  Most of these men would never be free again. But the new political situation had raised some hopes. Ozols was planning to exploit it.

  The guards reached the visitation room and sat Kandinsky down in a small chair across from him at the bare table.

  Ozols swallowed hard. He was finally here. The man he had only seen in his dreams.

  If what he’d heard was true, the two of them had followed the same line of thinking, independently of one another. Read the same verses. Thought the same thoughts. Arrived at the same conclusions.

  The universe had bowed to their will to be united and bring about justice.

  It was almost too much for him.

  Kandinsky was no boy; he was a full-grown man. Strong and scarred. Tattooed around his neck with ink. His head had been shaved. So little had changed for people like them since Ozols was first interned. Kandinsky was one more Latvian man who’d had his life stolen.

  “I’ve heard that you paint,” said Ozols.

  Kandinsky lifted his head. His gaze was hazy; he looked almost as if he were asleep.

  “I’ve come to speak to you about the world outside,” Ozols went on. “About the world that was once ours and can still be yours.”

  Kandinsky snorted.

  “Ours?” he said.

  “I know who you are and what potential you have. What opportunities you have to change the course of your own life and advance the cause of Aistia.”

  Something happened to Kandinsky when Ozols spoke those words; a gleam lit in his eyes.

  “I know who your friends are in here and who your enemies are on the outside. The time has come for you to rise and play your role in history as a warrior. You carry our culture on your skin.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I fought with the Germans as a legionary in the Second World War in the hope of securing our nation’s independence of the Russians. I served out my sentence in Siberia after the Swedes’ betrayal. The prospect of meeting you has kept me alive all those years. I have created a plan for our vengeance.”

  “Why have you chosen me?”

  “Because you are my son.”

  EPILOGUE

  September 7

  Pashie was lying on a bed in the hospital in Murmansk, wearing a worn gray gown, waiting for the doctor to come back.

  For two weeks she and Ilya and Nadia had been sitting in meetings with the families of the sailors and representatives of the Russian government. During the last few days, a new illness had taken hold of Pashie, different from the one the drugs had caused, and she had let the others take care of the meetings without her.

  After examining her, the doctor was able to tell her what had been afflicting her. He left her alone so she could digest the news. Pashie thought of the last weeks in Stockholm. The shaman had been right. He had confirme
d what, deep down, she’d known all along. There was nothing wrong with her body.

  She remembered that evening when they’d come home from Värmdö after Charlie Knutsson had disappeared. That had been the last time they’d slept together. Then Max had gone off to the boxing club and gotten assaulted. After that, everything had turned upside down. The threats, the murders, the photographs.

  As she wrote a text to Max, she could feel tears running down her cheeks. But they weren’t just tears of sorrow. It was sorrow mixed with a kind of vindication.

  The doctor opened the door, walked up to her, and laid a hand on her arm.

  “Have you decided?” he asked.

  Pashie looked down at the brief message she’d just sent to Sweden. The shaman’s last words rang out loud and clear within her once more.

  She looked the doctor in the eye.

  “Yes, I have decided.”

  My remains, too, must quietly be hidden

  In the embrace of the silent earth.

  May the space of the world be forgotten.

  Where I rest without name:

  Space and name are well known to the Lord.

  When he calls to him his friends.

  Max stood beside the cemetery caretaker, Tore, at the Rumshamn cemetery. Tore read the verses before the family grave where Maj-Lis Toom had now been reunited with those who’d never existed, her invented husband and son. When Tore had finished, he nodded at Max to indicate that he could now lay a gift for Maj-Lis in the grave with the coffin.

  Max squatted down and laid the slip of paper from the children’s home in Riga on the lid of the coffin. He wanted her—Rebeka Meija—to take with her the only thing she had owned that was connected to her real son. The memento that had reminded her of the most difficult moment of her life, the moment that had led to so much suffering for her and for so many others.

  Everything one does in one’s life has consequences. Maj-Lis had been the first victim. In contrast to the other victims, she had been the sinner herself, not the descendant of one. For that sin, she had been punished with death.