by Jens Lapidus
A half hour went by. He kept track of the time well since he was flipping the light switch every other minute.
The hockey game was boring, he thought. Tedious: pass from the wing to the defenseman, make shooting motions using his entire arm, usher the puck into the goal, the left defenseman back to the wing, wrist shot, straight in. The monotony made him tired. But what should he do?
He heard a strange sound.
Behind the hockey game.
Something rustling.
He looked carefully. Followed the wall.
An animal.
It stared at him from its perch on the moving box. A rat.
A huge black rat. The eyes were blank, evil, porcelain marbles. The tail like a long worm on the box.
The terror grabbed hold of him at once. Fear that welled up from his gut. He didn’t dare move.
The rat sat still. Seemed to be watching him.
Niklas stood even more still. The only thing he could think was, Please don’t let it jump at me, please don’t let it touch me.
Then the lights went out.
And he screamed. He screamed like he’d never screamed before. Everything came at once: the tears, the horror, the panic. He bawled out his terror, his fear of the dark and the animal that’d been staring at him.
He fumbled for the light switch. At the same time, it felt like his entire brain would explode at the thought of accidentally touching the animal.
Where was the light switch?
He searched with his hands along the wall in quick motions. Hoped that this would scare the rat away.
Finally, he found it.
He turned the lights on. Tumbled toward the door. Opened it. Sprinted up from the basement to the ground floor. Skipped the elevator. Ran up all the seven flights of stairs in one go.
Tore open the front door. Breathless, with a sob still stuck in his throat.
As soon as he came in, he was struck by another kind of panic. The rat was forgotten. The sounds he heard killed off all his other fears. The screams were coming from the living room. He knew them so well. He’d heard them so many times before.
The coffee table was pushed aside toward the TV. All three sofa cushions were scattered on the floor. A beer lay spilled nearby. Beside the sofa was his mother, on her knees.
Above her stood Claes, beating her.
Niklas started screaming.
Mom was crying. She was bleeding from the nose and her blouse was torn over the shoulder.
Claes turned to him. His fist was still held high in the air. “Go back down to the basement, Niklas.”
Then he let his fist fall. It hit her across the back.
She looked at Niklas. Their eyes met. He saw terror. He saw sorrow and pain. He saw love. But he also saw something else—he saw hate. And he could feel it clearly, clearer than he’d ever felt anything—he hated Claes. More than anything in the world.
She called to him, “Please Niklas, it’s okay. Go to your room. Please.”
Claes’s fist fell again. He roared. “You fucking cunt, you care more about that little shit than me.”
Mom screamed. Collapsed.
Claes kicked her belly.
Niklas ran into his room. Before he closed the door he saw Claes kick her again. This time in the head.
He shut his eyes and covered his ears with his hands.
The sounds pushed their way through.
He tried to think about the rat in the basement.
PART 2
(Two months later)
26
Time flies when you have a calling. A life mission. A mantra: Si vis pacem, para bellum. If you wish for peace, prepare for war.
Niklas jogged three times a week. Followed by push-ups, stomach and back exercises. Trained with his knife every day. Practiced the breathing, the control, the feeling. Prepared himself. Exerted himself. One principle was certain: a small war demands as thorough preparation as a big war. The only difference: the number of boots on the ground.
Today, he ran his regular loop. Over the Aspudden school’s paved yard. Four stories of yellowish brick, high windows that let in good light. Not like the Afghan mud bunkers where seven kids shared one textbook. The playground was swarming with kids. School must’ve started again after the summer. Niklas eyed them. Wild, screaming, undisciplined. Still undecided what he thought about kids, anyway. He saw the divide. The guys on one side, the girls on the other. And the subgroups: the nerds, the jocks, the dangerous ones. He saw the violence. A boy, ten years old max, jeans with tears over the knees: pushed a girl who looked to be the same age. She fell. Cried. Lay there by herself. Alone in the world. The boy ran back to his group of friends. Into the camaraderie, the safety of the group. Niklas deliberated: step up, teach the kid a thing or two about pushing people around. Make him feel thirty times more vulnerable than the girl. But now wasn’t the time.
It was the end of August. The sun warmed in an unconvincing way: just the hint of a cool breeze and this would turn into a chilly run.
The past few weeks’d been hectic, valuable, illuminating. His strategy was taking shape. The swarm of conflicts was clearing up. The time for attack was drawing closer. Si vis pacem, para bellum.
He felt the heat rise in his body. First his gut. Then his legs and head.
He reflected over the past few months.
Two days after he’d gotten hold of the list of women’s names from the girl at Safe Haven, he’d gone to a 7-Eleven and bought surf time on the computers. Paper and pen in front of him. Googled the names and telephone numbers. He couldn’t find a full name or address for three of them; maybe they were unlisted. He took notes: a total of seven full names with addresses attached to them. Wondered what the woman from Safe Haven was supposed to do with the numbers. Probably work from home or something, make support calls, coddle the poor souls. Even though everyone knew what was really needed—someone to pacify their men.
He sat thinking. How to search further? Brainstormed possible information sources. Only came up with one—Skatteverket, the national tax authority. Called, checked if the women were married and to whom, or if someone else was listed as a resident at the address in question. At the end of the day he’d written down the names of six men plus their addresses. Six abusers—six enemy combatants.
The following day. Niklas made his first investment—a DCU, as he called it: data control unit. In other words, he bought a laptop and ordered high-speed Internet.
That whole week: He worked on ideas on the computer. Took notes. Created folders for different proposals, information on every person on the list. Four days later, his Internet was installed. Now he could start researching for real. He tried to organize. Theorize. Analyze.
First and foremost: he needed a car. But other things too: equipment for private espionage. A reverse door-peephole viewer, waterproof surveillance cameras, extra camera lenses, wall mikes, earpieces, night-vision binoculars, recording devices, fake license plates. A ton of stuff.
He searched for cars on used-car sites online. Niklas hadn’t lived a life with a close connection to the Internet, but he’d managed to snoop out info about the men. Still, he was a novice: it took half a day to learn the ropes. Which search engines generated relevant hits, which car sites had the best selection, where you could deal with private people and didn’t have to mess with companies, where he could find normally priced future APCs—armored personnel carriers—with four-wheel drive.
He knew next to nothing at this point. He didn’t know when/where/how he was going to need the car. If something was going to have to be transported in it, if he might be shot at by the police, on what kind of terrain it would be driven. Only two things were decided: He had to begin watching the men right away. And the car had to have tinted windows.
First, he checked out a Jeep Grand Cherokee from 2006. In the ad, the seller claimed: extremely good condition, only nine thousand miles, diesel engine. Sounded perfect, the car could handle any terrain. The back windows: big, dark,
no visibility. The downside: the price—they wanted three hundred G’s for it. Niklas went out to Stocksund, a ritzy suburb, just to be on the safe side. The car was nice, would’ve been perfect. He was sitting on savings, but war cost money. There’d be more expenses than just the car. He had to watch his wallet.
The next alternative: a four-wheel drive Audi Avant from 2002. Seemed awesome: complete service history, GPS, side air bags, winter tires with rims, xenon headlights, tinted windows. The whole shebang. Niklas couldn’t care less about the fenders, the wheels, the interior, and stuff like that. But the GPS—it hit him: a navigator was exactly what he needed. He wasn’t exactly a pro at finding his way around Stockholm yet. What’s more, the ad said the car’d been driven by a chick. The price: two hundred grand, more than okay. Very good condition, well taken care of! Call to take a look. He punched the numbers into his phone.
The car was being sold by someone named Nina Glavmo-Svensén in Edsviken, Sollentuna.
Vikingavägen: leafy Sven dreamscape. He tinkered with his waist belt. The money order was in there. One hundred and eighty thousand. Also: twenty thousand cash in case there wasn’t any room for haggling. Thanked DynCorp for his financial circumstances. Without their know-how, his money would’ve been paid in cash down there. But now: their connections with banks all over the world solved that problem. Put the money straight into Chase Manhattan’s office, which transferred it directly, via an affiliate in Nassau with better privacy regulations, to safe old Handelsbanken in Stockholm. The remainder of Niklas’s savings after the fiasco in Macao: 500,000 kronor. And now he was going to blow almost half the money.
Number twenty-one. A two-story yellow-painted wood house with a garage. In the garden: two fruit trees past blooming. A sprinkler and an inflatable baby pool on the lawn. It was too good to be true. There had to be some dirt hiding behind the perfect façade.
Niklas rang the doorbell.
A woman opened. The seller, Nina Glavmo-Svensén. For about three seconds, Niklas was speechless. He hadn’t expected that the seller would be his age. Did people who hadn’t even turned thirty yet live in houses like this? He didn’t know what to say. Nina Glavmo-Svensén: hot as hell. Dressed in shorts and a tank top. Crooked smile. A baby on her hip. Niklas couldn’t judge how old it was or if it was a girl or a boy.
He extended his hand, “Hi, I’m Johannes. I wanted to take a look at your car.” A good alias, Johannes.
Nina seemed surprised. Smiled nervously.
Niklas laughed.
Nina looked into his eyes. He returned her gaze. What did he see in there? What was her life like? Who had decided that the car had to be sold? Was it her decision or was there someone else who made the decisions around here? He thought he saw a darkness in her eyes, a hint of sorrow. It wasn’t impossible.
“Good thing you didn’t drive here, it can be hard to find the way.”
They laughed. The mood relaxed.
It was cool in the garage. Three parked cars. The Audi, a Volvo V70, and a black Porsche 911. Niklas pointed to the Porsche. “It was two hundred for that one, right?” Again: laughter.
He checked out the Audi. Good: it wouldn’t attract attention. All the windows but the windshield were tinted. Plenty of space if you folded the backseat down. The xenon headlights gave better distribution of light when driving in the dark. Maybe it wasn’t quite like the Jeep he’d looked at, but the four-wheel drive should be able to handle most terrains. Nina didn’t know exactly how the GPS worked, but Niklas could figure that out on his own. She hadn’t driven it many miles and the service history seemed complete. Couldn’t be better. It would be his—he just had to bring the price down first.
She showed him where the winter tires were. Niklas rolled one out. Examined it.
“You don’t exactly want to think of the winter on a sunny day like today. But these tires are not okay. Much too worn down.” He pressed his finger down as far as it would go. “The tread depth here is only a few millimeters.”
They discussed the car. The winter tires apparently came from another car. The kid on her hip remained calm. Nina smiled at Niklas, laughed at his attempts at jokes. After ten minutes, he said, “I’m very interested in the car. I’ll take it right now for one-eighty. I’m going to need to buy new winter tires, after all.”
Nina gazed into his eyes again. “One-eighty should be okay. But then you can’t have it now. I have to discuss it with my husband when he comes home tonight.”
Again. Niklas’s thoughts flashed: under what conditions did this woman really live? What had her baby been forced to witness in this sun-drenched house? His thoughts were spinning, worse and worse. He made an effort. Tried to smile. “What about one-ninety?”
Nina extended her hand. “We’ve got a deal.”
Meanwhile, he’d gotten a job. As a security guard, after all. He sat in a sentry box and controlled vehicles on their way in and out of the pharmaceutical company Biovitrum’s complex in Solna. Wasn’t even allowed to carry a weapon. Flipped through magazines. The boredom worse than patrolling barbed-wire fences in a sandstorm.
But all the stuff he’d ordered had arrived. It was lined up and waiting on the floor of his apartment.
The base package for eavesdropping through walls: a MW-22 unit. According to the operating instructions, it could handle listening through twelve-inch-thick concrete walls, windows, doors, without a problem. Equipped with an RCA jack: the ability to connect digital functions.
A GPS locating system for vehicles—for cars he needed to track in real time, but couldn’t break into. The system was built into a waterproof protective case with powerful magnets and was secured on the underside of the car’s body. It ran on twelve batteries—the car could be followed over the course of a week with up to five-second updates without the batteries dying. Heavenly high-tech.
There were two types of cameras. First, three CCD cameras for outdoor use, 480TVL, 25-millimeter lens, black-and-white, 0.05 Lux. They were waterproof and could handle temperatures as low as negative thirteen degrees. Should work for the men who lived in single-family homes. In addition, four small surveillance cameras for concealed application. Could be mounted in junction boxes, in wire covers, under lamps, in fuse boxes. Perfect for the apartment dwellers.
A bunch of regular bugs: small mikes with radio transmitter.
A hard drive. Could hold several days’ worth of recordings and transmit remote monitoring through the Internet and other networks. Could handle four surveillance cameras at once. The heart of his operation.
Finally, the small stuff: the reverse door-peephole viewer, extra lenses for the cameras, two different license plates for the car, binoculars, a ladder, the right clothes, books, tools.
He’d already blown more than seventy-five grand. War was expensive—an eternal truth. With luck, it would total less than three hundred grand. He really needed to keep working his security guard job. DynCorps’ money wouldn’t last forever. More expenses awaited. More missions to complete. He regretted his naïveté—why’d he try his luck in Macao?
Still: the Internet was magical. In four weeks, he’d built up an FBI-style hub. Now he just had to get the crap mounted.
He called in sick from work. Sat at home in his apartment from eight in the morning until eight at night: practiced with the gear. Hooked up the cameras one by one. Read the manual as thoroughly as if he were building a nuclear reactor. Tested, tested, tested. Poured water on the outdoor cameras, checked their resistance to shock, put them in the freezer. Learned to apply the mini cameras, to conceal them, to pull their cables along edges and borders to locations where the receiver unit could be placed. Played around with the MPEG hard drive, connected it to his TV at home. Repeated the procedure with the cameras without the manual. Assembled them in the dark. With only one hand. By heart. Tried out the wiretap equipment on the girl next door. Her guy’d either split or stayed away. He heard how she talked on the phone or watched miniseries on TV. The equipment was sick: the beeping sou
nd when she punched numbers into her cell phone sounded as though she were standing twenty inches away. He assembled the GPS system. Secured it under the Audi. Drove around Örnsberg. The box stayed in place under the car, made it through the speed bump on Hägerstensvägen. He checked the receiver. Worked better than the worn-out gear he’d operated in the sandbox. He drove around and checked out where the different men lived. Learned the maps, the blind alleys, the stoplights, the one-way streets. Continued to test out the gear at home, learned to use it better than he’d mastered his firearms down there. He analyzed methodology, memorized locations, planned. Hardly talked to Mom, didn’t think about the murder in the basement at her place, stopped having nightmares. Responded sparingly to Benjamin’s texts. Didn’t give a shit about the doctor’s note he needed for his disability leave. Time passed. The war would soon be upon them.
The following weeks, he went to work as much as he could. They wondered what the hell he was doing, screwing around with the schedule as if it was a grab-a-beer-with-a-bud appointment that you really couldn’t care less about. But what could he do: Si vis pacem, para bellum. The mission took time.
During the bright summer evenings and nights, he sat in the Audi outside the apartment complexes or houses where they lived. Tried to guage the situation. Which ones he should begin with.
All six of them were normal dudes. From the outside. They didn’t have particularly late habits on weeknights. Niklas set the cameras up during three nights in the beginning of August. Worked in silence. It was easy: he’d already zeroed in on the spots where he’d put them. Felt so good not to have to deal with daytime noise pollution: cell phones ringing, the rush of traffic, neighbors pounding on each other. Outside one house: a CCD camera in a tree. Outside the other house: the camera in a bush behind an electrical cabinet. The apartments were harder. How would he be able to see into them? One of the apartments was on the ground floor. He hid the camera in a stairwell on the other side of the street. The distance was a little too great, but it would do for the kinds of photos he needed. The other three apartments wouldn’t work. He’d have to guard them personally.