Her eyes were focused.
As if she’d thought of something.
And she had.
30
She was on the E18 motorway heading towards Norrtälje, but instead of taking the exit for the small town, Agneta carried on towards Kapellskär. Then she turned left onto Rådmansövägen, heading to Räfsnäs. Of course, it was just on the off chance – but she reflected that Ober had probably not acquired a new refuge in the years that had passed, given that everything that had once seemed alarming had quickly faded away. How quickly some people began to think they could live ordinary lives and forget about their true existences! Forget who they really were . . .
Also, Ober had no reason to believe she knew of his hideout. On one occasion he’d used it for a meeting with Geiger, and she’d heard them agree to meet at his sister’s summer house – in Räfsnäs. Later on, she’d made sure to ask for the sister’s name – in entirely different circumstances – and then it had been easy to put together the pieces of the puzzle.
It had been over thirty years, but she still retained a lot of information from back then. Names, places, appearances, anecdotes, family relationships, personal preferences. The only question was which bits of it would be put to use.
She parked by the harbour in Räfsnäs, where the boats for Tjockö and Lidö and Fejan all departed and where there was a lifeboat stationed. There was a small kiosk targeting sweet-toothed holidaymakers, and beyond that there were small red fishermen’s huts. Just above the car park was the bus stop and the community gathering point. It seemed Ober was faithful to the archipelago.
She stayed in the car while she checked the old A–Z map she’d had in the car since long before the advent of mapping applications.
Karlsrovägen 5. It ought to be a house diagonally across the narrow lane running along the water’s edge. There was one larger house and a few smaller ones. Agneta used the rear-view mirror to continue examining the houses without having to turn to face them. Perhaps it was best to sneak in from the back. Was that unduly cautious? If anyone saw her, it would seem suspicious – there were people all over the place here.
She examined her reflection in the mirror. No, he wouldn’t recognise her. She’d changed too much, what with her shorn hair and lack of makeup. So – it would be better to enter from the road and just knock on the front door. There were lots of people around during the summer – holidaymakers who were there to catch boats, friends visiting, people renting houses for a week or two. She might just be a visitor who’d gone astray, an older lady who desperately needed to use the toilet, or a tourist who’d fallen in love with the place and wanted to buy a house. There was no reason for Ober to be suspicious. On the contrary, he had every reason to act normally since he was likely to be a familiar face in these parts and wouldn’t want to draw attention to himself.
He’d been to their home so many times. He’d spent so many hours with her husband. He’d spent so much time on his pupil, Geiger. Indoctrinating, enlisting and educating his novice.
Was it all his fault? What would her life have been like if Ober hadn’t managed to recruit his devoted Geiger?
She stepped up onto the cracked, unpainted porch steps of the house. It would be best if she knocked hard on the door – like someone with nothing to hide. A proper knock.
Before long she heard footsteps from the other side of the door.
A woman.
The sister.
There were similarities between them, in that sibling fashion. No matter how different siblings were, the shape of the nose or a certain angle to the mouth always divulged the truth about the familial connection. Two individuals who’d been manufactured by the same people – even if the creators were long gone.
‘Sorry, do you possibly have a phone I could borrow? Mine’s died and I was supposed to meet my daughter in the harbour, but I’ve no idea where she is.’
‘Of course, come inside.’
The sister turned around and went back into the house. Agneta followed her.
There was a small hallway and then they entered the kitchen, which seemed to serve as a common room. The decor was dated and the worse for wear, as was so often the case in summer houses. Furniture and textiles left behind for the winter, to be subjected to the cold and damp. Things that hadn’t been used for decades but were left where they were, because that was where they’d always been. Fly faeces and spiderwebs. Cracked and stained porcelain, odd sets of cutlery, glasses that could never be quite fully cleaned. In the centre of the room was a large dining table with stacks of magazines and books on it. There was an armchair with a footstool next to it, and a window looking out on to the garden.
Agneta looked around.
The frying pan would do nicely.
Before the sister had time to turn around, Agneta slammed the frying pan into the back of her head. The woman collapsed, and Agneta immediately began to wonder how much violence old people could cope with. Could a blow that hard have finished the sister off?
She tied the woman to a chair for safety’s sake, and then she checked for a pulse and listened for her breathing. Yep – she was still alive.
Summer houses had thin walls and there were a lot of people on the move around Räfsnäs. Agneta found a top and cut it into strips using the kitchen scissors. Then she pulled out her pistol and pressed it against the sister’s temple in case she came to, before filling her mouth with the rags. Then she took a longer strip of fabric and tied it across her mouth and around her head.
It took a long time for the sister to regain consciousness.
Almost an hour.
While she waited, Agneta stayed out of the way in a small bedroom. In the unlikely event that any visitor called, the woman was positioned so that Agneta could sneak up behind the interloper and use the frying pan again. Or her pistol.
In the meantime, she contemplated what to do next. She didn’t remember much of her training, and really didn’t feel tempted by the prospect of torture. Perhaps threats would suffice? She hoped so.
‘Where is he?’ said Agneta, when the sister finally came to.
The woman didn’t answer, and Agneta tried to remember her name. Lisbeth? Berit? Betty? Details like that usually helped, but her mind was completely blank. Why had they never been trained how to deal with forgetfulness? It wasn’t just her body that was failing. Her brain was also slowly but surely packing up.
‘Where is he?’ she asked again.
The sister merely shook her head.
Agneta looked around and had an idea. This particular method of torture was one they’d never used back in her day, but it seemed to be very popular nowadays. She went over to the wood burner, picked up the bucket of water standing beside it and grabbed a tea towel. She carried the bucket over to the bound woman and pulled her head back with a firm grip on her hair. Then she put the towel over her face and poured a scoop of water over her.
She had no idea whether she was doing it right, but water boarding was water boarding, she thought to herself. It was unlikely to be a pleasant experience, at any rate.
When she paused, the sister mumbled something through the fabric.
‘Are you trying to tell me where he is?’ said Agneta, and at that moment she remembered the sister’s name. Elisabeth.
Elisabeth shook her head and gave her a rancorous look. Agneta shrugged her shoulders and carried on. More water, longer periods, shorter breaks.
When the sister was snorting enough that Agneta was concerned she really might keel over, she stopped for a longer break.
While Elisabeth tried to recover, Agneta went to search the kitchen drawers. Some of the knives looked pretty scary. She laid them out on the dining table, and then looked at Elisabeth for a long time. Elisabeth stared back at her pugnaciously.
Agneta was about to pick up one of the knives when the other woman began to waggle her head and move her mouth to show she wanted to talk.
Agneta went and removed the strips of fabric from her mouth.
‘Pass auf!’ Elisabeth shouted as soon as she could, and at that moment Agneta heard a sound behind her. She turned quickly and caught a glimpse of a figure disappearing.
Shit.
The cow had tricked her. She’d heard her brother’s footsteps and pretended she wanted to talk, but only so she could warn him.
She ought to stick a knife in her, but it was more important to get hold of Ober.
Agneta struck the bound woman with the pistol handle, then ran out of the door and round the corner of the house outside. She saw Ober ahead of her, on his way towards the harbour.
She followed him, wondering whether he had a car parked there or whether he would leap onto one of the boats.
But he did neither.
When he reached the asphalt between the kiosk and the boats, he stopped and turned towards her with a smile. She fumbled for the pistol, but he simply looked at her.
‘What are you going to do? Shoot me? With all these people around?’
Agneta looked around her. Families with children, pensioners, youths. People everywhere.
He was right.
She pushed the pistol back into her pocket again. At that moment, he recognised her, despite her new appearance.
‘It’s you,’ he said. Shocked.
Of course he’d always known that people like her were part of the game – that they might be after him. But he’d apparently never guessed that she was one of them.
‘Who do you work for?’ he said.
She didn’t answer.
‘Have you always . . .?’
She turned around and headed towards the car. He remained rooted to the spot. Safe but disconcerted. His sense of composure gone.
She got into the car again. How the hell was she going to deal with this?
Now he knew who she was. He would either talk to the police, or he would contact his handlers. The ones who’d activated the old spy ring again. In all likelihood, they were tough people who would go after her family.
In the rear-view mirror, she saw him take a couple of cautious steps back towards the house – probably fully preoccupied with processing what this meant. That he’d got away. That she was the one who was after him. That everything had kicked off.
Did he know what their mission was? Did he know what he and the others were to be used for?
He would never confess now. But it was that possibility she had to remove.
So she made up her mind.
She turned the key in the ignition.
Shifted into reverse.
Put her foot down.
All the time, she had Ober in her sights and not until the last inch did he turn in response to the sound of the engine.
He probably had no idea what was happening.
She reached over 60 kilometres an hour before she hit him. That ought to be enough. There was a dull thud, and then the car shuddered as the back wheels went over the body.
She braked and heard the first hysterical screams as she got out, and saw the blood trickling from beneath the car.
She quickly pretended to be distraught, assuming the role of a confused old woman who’d lost control of her car.
‘Oh, my God! Oh, God! How could it happen? How could it? The car just went out of control!’
Then she turned to the crowd that had gathered, continuing in the same pleading tone.
‘The car just went out of control . . .’
It worked. A young girl even began to comfort her.
‘It wasn’t your fault.’
A middle-aged man in shorts and a polo shirt was already on his knees, looking under the car. Over by the lifeboat, she could see two men running towards them. The man in shorts backed up and Agneta bent down and crawled under the car.
She wriggled in so that she got her mouth right to his ear.
‘Where are you meeting?’
He glanced at her with bloodshot eyes. His breathing was laboured and rattling.
‘I have your sister tied up in the house. Do you want to save her?’
And then he talked.
When he was done, she pressed her fingers against his throat so that the blood supply to the brain was stopped. She pressed as hard as she could, so that her knuckles went white. And Ober was too weak to offer up any resistance.
‘He’s dying!’ she cried out, with as much panic in her voice as she could muster.
And once he was completely still, she scrambled out from under the car and got back to her feet.
‘Call an ambulance!’ she shouted at the crowd standing around her. ‘I’ll go and meet it. The car just went out of control . . .’
Following her exercise in improvised disinformation, she left the harbour but then turned right towards the house instead of waiting for the ambulance. It wouldn’t be there for another half an hour anyway.
She would have to abandon the car, and she coolly assumed that the name of the owner was unlikely to help the police anyway. She needed to get away.
Fast.
She’d been ready to use the pistol to get away, but it hadn’t been needed.
As she left, she’d looked through the side windows of the estate’s boot. Lying there under the blanket was her Kalashnikov. She would probably have found a use for it, but she didn’t dare retrieve it. It would have to be a mystery for the police, just like the owner of the car.
She put all her energy into walking in a calm and controlled fashion. Everyone in the harbour was stunned by the blood and the body under the car, and no one shouted or came after her.
Inside the house, the sister was still there, tied up but conscious. Agneta thought to herself that she personally would have made an attempt to free herself. Perhaps this Elisabeth woman was in shock? Perhaps she was counting on her brother coming to her rescue? It was unclear. But Ober would never save anyone again.
‘Car keys?’ said Agneta, and the sister nodded towards the kitchen counter. She appeared to admit defeat.
Hanging on a hook above the counter was a keyring with an old BP mascot made from plastic on it. A Renault. Agneta was a sceptic when it came to French cars, but it would have to do.
She pulled down the keys, and suddenly she wasn’t sure about the sister’s name any longer. Maybe it was Elsie?
Then she pulled out the pistol, pressed the muzzle to Elisabeth’s forehead – or whatever her name was – and pulled the trigger.
If she hadn’t been thinking so much about what would have happened if Ober had escaped, she probably wouldn’t have bothered getting the sister out of the way. And she would probably have caused herself a whole lot of trouble.
The sister appeared to have helped the brother in his activities. Perhaps she even knew what was going on. Perhaps she would have helped to carry it out.
She’d been tough enough to keep quiet during the water boarding, and smart enough to manage to warn him when the opportunity presented itself.
A soldier.
Zealous and dedicated.
What kind of sick parents had brought two children like that into the world?
By the edge of the garden, she found an old beige Renault 5.
She unlocked the door, checked the gearstick and the controls. Hanging from the rear-view mirror was a pennant with green bobbles hanging off it and the word KÅSEBERGA.
The little car started without any trouble.
She would need to dump it within an hour or so to be safe, but first she wanted to get back into Stockholm.
She finally knew where the meeting was to take place, but she didn’t have much time.
31
Ebba had, with the utmost reluctance, agreed to meet her mother at the Caffè Nero across the street from her school. She was in the final days of her school years, so Sara didn’t bother to check whether Ebba really had a free period. The Cold War, Stellan’s murder and potential terrorist acts – none of it could hold back thoughts of the night before. With Olle, she thought things would just get worse if she tried to talk to him, and she’d c
hosen to believe Martin, but she felt as if she needed to try and get through to Ebba. Sometimes relationships improved when mother and daughter went their separate ways and led their own independent lives – but Sara didn’t want them to be separated by such a tremendous distance. The better the relationship between them when Ebba moved out, the stronger the ties between them would remain. Or so she thought.
Sara ordered a latte, but Ebba didn’t want anything when she eventually cruised in and sat down opposite her mother, looking surly and dismissive.
‘What is it?’ said Ebba, when she finally opened her mouth after staring out of the window for a while. In the meantime, Sara had been scrutinising her daughter in silence. She was a beautiful young woman, illuminated by the early summer sun in Vasastan, on the starting blocks for her own life, where she would make her own decisions. What were her goals and dreams? Her daughter had talked about law school, business school, studying abroad. Were those her own thoughts, or had she acquired them from her friends? The school you went to and the friends you had during your youth could affect your trajectory through life more than your parents, sometimes. And that felt wrong to Sara, but right now she didn’t think anything she said would be taken well by Ebba.
‘I just wanted to talk to you about last night. To explain that I’m not spying on you, that I trust you, and that I only took down those guys because I wanted to protect you. I told them afterwards that they could report me if they wanted to, but they didn’t.’
‘I don’t care about them. But you didn’t need to hit them like that. I can look after myself. Don’t you think I’ve had to deal with disgusting guys before?’
‘Well, of course—’
‘I don’t know what kind of world you grew up in,’ Ebba said, interrupting her mother. ‘But nowadays, you can’t do anything without disgusting guys trying to hit on you and evil bitches calling you a whore.’
‘But don’t you understand that I just wanted to help you?’
‘I don’t want that. How am I supposed to manage later on?’
‘You don’t have to – manage by yourself, that is.’
‘You’re going to follow me around my whole life?’
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