‘You’re only nineteen.’
‘I’ve been managing by myself since I was twelve. I want a coffee.’
Ebba got up and went to the counter to order a white coffee. Lots of milk. Then she returned with the pale brown drink and sat back down.
‘All those nights when you were working and Dad was out entertaining, did you think I was just at home?’
It cut into Sara’s heart. She pictured a fourteen-year-old Ebba in the nightclubs of Stureplan. Ebba saw the anxiety in her mother’s eyes.
‘Relax. You’ve taught me exactly how guys operate. I hung out around town, but I was always with friends, and always on my guard.’
‘Friends? But surely they were young girls, too?’
‘That was enough. Young girls can scream very loudly.’
‘Do you think I’ve been a bad mother?’
‘No,’ said Ebba, laughing. ‘No worse than anyone else. We often compare our mums and I’ve come to realise that there are some who are worse. Much worse. What’s more, I think people find their own mums more annoying the more alike they are.’
When had Ebba become this wise? Contrarian, teenage Ebba. Sara didn’t know what to say. In the middle of her surprise, Sara suddenly felt a new sense of security emerging. Perhaps it was all going to be okay after all.
‘What happened to Dad’s guitar?’ said Ebba, interrupting her mother’s ponderings.
Sara looked at her daughter and didn’t know what to say.
‘It was completely smashed to bits,’ said Ebba. ‘And Dad didn’t want to say anything. He said he’d dropped it on the floor, but that wouldn’t leave it that smashed. And then when you weren’t at home this morning, I thought you might have had a row.’
‘I was out running.’
‘And the guitar?’
‘It broke.’
‘Hmm, yes, I saw that much. But I thought Dad would have been devastated. He loved that guitar.’
Sara couldn’t find anything to say. She simply let the words die away. They finished their coffees and then Ebba said she had to go back to school, and Sara suspected that it wasn’t her classes that were drawing her back. The final week of sixth form was a time when you didn’t want to miss a single second of what felt like the high point in your life. It was probably one reason to be particularly pleased that Ebba had granted her this audience.
Sara was permitted to give her daughter a hug, and as she stood there on the pavement watching her cross Roslagsgatan, she thought to herself that she had at least got slightly – just slightly – closer to her daughter.
At the same time, there was something at the back of her mind bothering her.
‘I thought Dad would have been devastated.’
Ebba was right.
Why hadn’t Martin been more upset or angry when she smashed up his guitar?
Because he had a guilty conscience?
Sara did what she could to push away the doubt. She tried to focus on work, but instead it was Uncle Stellan who filled her mind, along with everything she’d found out from the retired colonel. She needed to talk it through with someone.
*
This time, Hedin opened up for Sara. Either she was finished with her work for the day, or she was curious about what Thörnell had told her.
‘What did he say?’ was in fact the first thing she said, once they’d sat down in her combined bedroom and lounge. She was on the edge of the bed, while Sara was seated in the only armchair. Hedin didn’t seem to entertain at home very often.
‘Not that much, to be honest,’ Sara said. ‘He was able to confirm that Stellan Broman had an intensive social life and that he’d visited him a couple of times, but then refrained from going.’
‘He must have guessed the purpose of the parties, given his position.’
‘But he mentioned something that he regretted, and that made me curious. “Stay-Put”.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Something to do with NATO’s secret defence plans, if I understood correctly. But he refused to say anything else. That was the only thing he was secretive about.’
‘Apart from everything he didn’t even mention,’ said Hedin, and of course she was right.
‘What is Stay-Put?’ said Sara.
‘No idea. Wait a second.’
Hedin went into the kitchen and began to search cupboards and drawers. Sara realised there was nothing she could do to help, and she stayed in the armchair. Hedin’s system was presumably beyond comprehension by anyone except her. Sara hoped she’d written some instructions, so that someone else could take over her research when she was gone.
She looked around the room. Hanging on the walls were a couple of paintings that Sara thought were heirlooms – a field and a monk blowing a horn. There were two small oval frames containing photos of young children. Perhaps they were nieces and nephews – she hadn’t got the impression Hedin had any of her own. A noticeboard with letters from the council, newspaper clippings and statutes from the tenants’ association. A bed with a stripy throw over it, a wall-mounted bed light, a bedside table with a large stack of books – and a few more on the floor next to it.
Sara felt like more coffee, but she didn’t want to interrupt Hedin. Instead, she nodded off in the armchair, her head at an angle – the sort of pose that meant she woke up every two or three minutes because it hurt, turned her head the other way and carried on sleeping. The morning run and the emotional outbursts of the night before had taken their toll.
After an hour, the researcher called out from the kitchen.
‘Here it is!’
It took Sara a few seconds to remember where she was. Then she got up, took a step in the wrong direction, turned around and went into the kitchen, feeling slightly groggy.
Hedin was sitting at her computer and nodded towards the screen, where the browser was showing an article from the Dagens Nyheter archives. Sara leaned in and looked at it. The article was from Thursday 13 March 1986, and had the headline BOMBS EVEN IF WE COMPLAIN. Hedin pointed at a picture in the bottom right-hand corner, of a man on a road who was showing a drain cover to the reporter.
‘The caption,’ she said.
Sara read it aloud.
‘According to the “Stay-Put” programme, civilians will be kept in their villages in the event war breaks out, to avoid disrupting military traffic. Thus, bombs will be positioned under the round drain covers on the access roads to all villages.’
She turned to Hedin.
‘Are those bombs still there? Why?’
‘And up there,’ she got as her reply. ‘Look under the subheading “The Fulda Gap”.’
Sara read on.
‘High above the plains, the khaki helicopters of the USA sweep past on their way towards the East German–West German border approximately twenty kilometres to the east. To the north and the south, the mountains rise around a thirty kilometre wide valley – known in military parlance as “The Fulda Gap”. Here, right in the heart of divided Germany, is Hattenbach – home to farms, small lanes, and ancient half-timbered houses. A comforting dollhouse idyll like thousands of others in West Germany.’
Sara turned back to Hedin.
‘Hattenbach – that’s where the bomb went off the day before yesterday.’
Then she carried on reading.
‘Strategists in the East and West believe that the Fulda Gap is where the first devastating blows will be struck if a third world war breaks out. “It came as a shock,” says Hans Schäfer of Hattenbach, speaking of the day around three years ago when he realised the fate planned for him and his neighbours in any eventual war. On his television, American generals were speaking about the importance of making the enemy’s advance more difficult immediately after the outbreak of war. American officers practised using atom bombs on a sandbox model in Texas to transform a West German village into a radioactive obstacle. These images would shock millions of West Germans, but among the villagers in Hattenbach, they had a particularly ominous resonanc
e. The model showed that their village in particular was designated to be wiped out.’
‘Here’s a good summary,’ said Hedin. ‘“In 1983 and 1984, the Fulda Gap was often discussed and written about in West Germany. Leaked military documents indicated that this particular area was one in which the civilian population ran a high risk of being sacrificed by troops on their own side.”’
‘And they lived with this,’ said Sara. ‘Every single day.’
‘They didn’t want to be reminded,’ said Hedin. ‘It says here, “The only way to live with the fear is to deny it.” And read this . . .’
Sara squinted at the screen.
‘“They became angry, explains Hans Schäfer, referring to his neighbours. Not at the tactic, not at the American military chiefs, but at the fact that they’d been allowed to find out themselves.”’
‘There’s a documentary that was shown by CBS in the USA too – The Nuclear Battlefield. Apparently they talk about Hattenbach in it, as the ground zero for a nuclear war. Stay-Put became common knowledge in the mid-eighties, but it seems as if all parties agreed to forget about it again. Almost nothing has been written about it since 1986.’
‘But the bomb in Hattenbach wasn’t an atom bomb. It didn’t destroy the whole village – just part of the road.’
‘That was probably just a taster,’ said Hedin. ‘Someone wants to demonstrate that the threats of old still exist.’
‘Do the atom bombs still exist? Could they also be set off? And how many of them are there?’
‘We don’t know.’
32
Sara had called and explained what she’d found out, but Anna had told her she was busy and asked whether they could discuss it later. They were searching for Stellan’s old stalkers, and had received in excess of two hundred tips from people who claimed to have seen Agneta – everywhere from Boden to Bangkok. Bielke was probably quite happy to let the Germans handle the more dramatic aspects of the investigation.
Sara had wanted to hand over the information and push everything to do with the murder and the Cold War out of her skull, with the assurance that Anna and her colleagues would get to the bottom of it all. However, she could tell from her friend’s tone of voice that buried bombs in Germany were a little bit too imaginative for her tastes. If there was anything in the espionage angle, she would have to deal with it by herself, Sara thought. She’d already gone way over the line in her private investigative endeavours. But what if she was on the right track? Was she prepared to take responsibility for letting Stellan’s death remain unsolved?
Sara’s thoughts wandered from Stellan to the house in Bromma, and to her own childhood, and to Martin, who hadn’t been crushed by the fact that Sara had smashed his guitar to pieces. In her mind’s eye, Sara pictured Martin with hordes of girls who wanted to become pop stars and sent him photos of their naked bodies. And how was Martin supposed to resist? Girls who were offering themselves up to him with their young, beautiful bodies. Girls who listened and were understanding. Nothing like Sara.
She knew that her thoughts weren’t especially constructive, and that they had little relationship to reality. Even if there was some basis to them, it didn’t help her one bit to torture herself like this. She considered going into work earlier, just to have something else to think about, but she realised that it would do nothing to divert her thoughts if she sat in the office on her own for hours, drinking coffee while she waited for David to arrive.
What could she do?
Sara thought about what she and Hedin had talked about, and realised that she had to find out more. If nothing else, she owed it to Agneta to try and uncover the truth about Stellan’s death.
The motorhome was still in the same spot. She went up to it and knocked on the door. When Sara got no answer, she knocked again and called out in English.
‘Police! Open up!’
It didn’t take more than a few seconds for the burly German police officer to open the door. They must have been in a rush to shut her up, because the man had forgotten to close the internal door behind him. Careless, Sara thought to herself. She pushed past him and he stepped aside. These particular campers had no desire to draw any attention to themselves.
Inside the mobile command centre, Breuer and Strauss were sitting at a computer screen each. Strauss seemed to be reviewing passenger lists from airlines, while Breuer was checking CCTV images that had clearly been pulled from airports. Both turned around when Sara entered.
‘Ruhe, bitte,’ said Breuer, getting up and waving her arms deprecatingly. Then she switched into her heavily accented English. ‘What are you doing here? You shouldn’t be here.’
‘I know what Stay-Put is,’ said Sara. ‘I know the bomb in Germany is to do with Stay-Put.’
‘And?’
‘The people investigating the case don’t believe it’s to do with the DDR and the Cold War. They’re going through old stalkers – so they won’t help you. But I can help.’
Breuer remained standing with one prohibitive hand still extended.
‘We’re used to getting by on our own,’ she said.
‘Remember that I know the family. I was there all the time. I may have seen things.’
Breuer gave Strauss a look.
‘Sit down,’ she said curtly, looking at Sara, who nodded and took a seat at the conference table opposite Breuer. The big guard dog of a policeman went to take his seat by the door.
Strauss came over with a beige folder that he placed on the table in front of Sara.
‘Sign first,’ said Breuer, crossing her arms and leaning back.
‘What is it?’ said Sara, looking at the German text.
‘Confidentiality papers.’
Confidentiality papers.
Sara wondered whether that was the correct term, but she grasped what they meant.
‘I don’t understand what it says,’ she said.
‘It says you can’t tell anyone about what we’ve discussed without going to prison.’
‘That’s not up to you.’
‘In this case, it is. Sign or leave.’
Sara hesitated. There was probably only one way to obtain the truth about her childhood idol and her friends’ father. So she signed and slid the paper back across the table.
‘Stay-Put is no secret,’ said Breuer, as soon as the paper with Sara’s signature had been deposited in the filing cabinet. ‘It’s been common knowledge since the eighties.’
That might be true, Sara thought to herself. The Dagens Nyheter article had been from 1986.
‘But no one’s connected it with the bomb that recently detonated in Germany,’ she said. ‘And you’d prefer that no one did, wouldn’t you?’
No answer.
‘Was it one of those bombs that blew up?’ said Sara. ‘Are there more of them?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Are there nuclear explosives still in the ground?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘And what does Stellan Broman have to do with the bombs?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘What’s the point of signing confidentiality papers if you just say “don’t know”?’
Breuer merely stared at her, completely unmoving. Sara got up to leave.
‘OK,’ said Breuer, signalling that she should sit down again. ‘What we do know is that the people who called Geiger have come across information about old defence systems from the days of the Iron Curtain.’
‘How?’
‘It’s to do with old revolutionary groups who used to receive assistance from East Germany in the old days, and who always had strong ties with revolutionaries in the Middle East.’
‘Why are you telling her this?’ Strauss said to Breuer. He spoke in German, so Sara wasn’t completely certain of his meaning.
‘If she’s going to help us, then . . .’ Breuer replied, also in German. Sara didn’t catch the end of the sentence.
Strauss was silent for a moment, but seemed to accept the e
xplanation.
‘Are Palestinians behind the bombs?’ said Sara, thinking about the Palestinian groups that had been active during her own childhood. Terrorists in the eyes of some, freedom fighters in the eyes of others. At any rate, they killed people. And what you saw on the news was destined to be talked about at breaktimes. Sara even dimly remembered playing aeroplane hijack in the school playground, when those acts had been at their most common. They’d demanded the release of prisoners without really understanding what that meant.
‘No,’ said Breuer. ‘We don’t think so – but we think they first received the information in the eighties, and that someone there has now sold it on to militant Islamists. Probably to raise money for their own cause or for personal enrichment. Or perhaps someone’s been radicalised, and realises that this is a powerful weapon against the West.’
‘East Germany was tremendously successful at infiltrating West Germany and NATO – right up to the top,’ said Strauss. ‘You might have read about Rupp and Guillaume. Only the CIA, who have the Rosenholz files, have any idea how much information the Stasi obtained. A lot of this information – especially about weapons systems – was put up for sale when the Wall fell. And there was even more when the Soviet Union collapsed. The revolutionary groups may have been given a slice of the action as a form of revenge. The PLO, the PFLP, Black September and so on.’
‘And Stellan?’
‘We think that the East German spy ring here in Sweden was somehow in possession of key information about the explosives,’ said Strauss. ‘Their locations, or how to activate them, or something like that. They needed to hide in a neutral country – wherever that was. During the Cold War, Sweden was a meeting spot for all sorts of terrorist groups – especially West Germans and Palestinians – but in their wake you also had Italians, French, Spaniards and Japanese who came here to co-ordinate their own terrorist activities. They could meet here undisturbed, thanks to your somewhat naive police force.’
Sara recollected the disobliging Brundin from the Security Service, and was amused by the Germans’ perspective on her generation of operatives.
‘And most IMs have been living here in perfect safety following the fall of the Wall,’ said Breuer. ‘Very few have been uncovered, none have been punished, and their files have been classified as top secret by your Security Service. It’s possible that some of them have retained their political convictions and want to teach the decadent West a lesson.’
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