The Black Path

by Asa Larsson

  It didn’t matter much. In fact, it didn’t matter at all. A slight lack of sleep was nothing, really. Today she had a packed schedule—first the meeting with the two police officers, then the criminal court all day. And she liked to be busy.

  “Mauri Kallis started with nothing,” said Rebecka. “He’s the American dream, but in Swedish. He really is. Born in 1964 in Kiruna—when were you born?”

  “Sixty-two,” replied Anna-Maria. “But he must have gone to a different senior school. And at high school you don’t know the younger kids.”

  “He was taken into care when he was little,” Rebecka went on, “foster home, arrested for a break-in when he was twelve, too young to be charged, but that’s where things turned around; the social worker got him to start studying. He started at the Business School in Stockholm in 1984, and started speculating on the stock market while he was still studying. That’s when he got to know Inna Wattrang and her brother Diddi. Diddi and Mauri were on the same course. Mauri Kallis worked for a firm of stockbrokers for a while after he graduated, and during those two years his own share portfolio grew; he bought H & M early, sold Fermenta before the crash, one step ahead all the time. Then he left and devoted all his time to trading for himself. A hundred and ten percent high-risk projects, first of all trading in commodities, then more and more buying and selling concessions, both in oil and in mining.”

  “Concessions?” asked Anna-Maria.

  “You buy permission to drill for some natural resource, oil, gas, minerals. You might find something, but instead of starting a mine yourself, you sell the concession.”

  “So you could make a lot of money, but you could also lose a lot?” asked Sven-Erik.

  “Oh yes, you could lose everything. So you need to be a gambler if you’re going to do that kind of thing. And sometimes he really was way down. But Inna and Diddi Wattrang were already working for him at that time. They seem to have been the ones who attracted the finance for different projects.”

  “So it’s a question of getting somebody to go for it,” said Anna-Maria.

  “Exactly. The banks don’t lend money for this sort of thing, so you have to find investors who are willing to take a risk. And the Wattrangs seem to have been very good at that.”

  Rebecka went on:

  “But over the last three years they’ve hung on to some of the concessions in the company, and they’ve also bought a number of mines and started to work them. All the Swedish newspapers are writing about the leap from stocks and shares into mining as the big step, but I don’t agree. I think it’s a much bigger step to go from speculating in concessions to starting up mining operations, working on the industrial side…”

  “Perhaps he just wanted to take things a little easier,” suggested Anna-Maria. “Not to take such big risks.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Rebecka. “He hasn’t chosen to start up mines in easy locations. They’re in Indonesia, for example. Or Uganda. A while ago the media turned against just about every mining company that has interests in developing countries.”

  “Because…?”

  “Because…well, just about every reason you can think of! Because poor countries daren’t create environmental laws that might scare off foreign investors, so the water is poisoned and people get cancer and incurable liver diseases and so on. Because companies in countries like that cooperate with corrupt regimes; there might be a civil war going on, and they’re using the military against their own people.”

  “Was there anything in it?” asked Sven-Erik, who had a police officer’s built-in distrust of the media.

  “Definitely. Some of the companies in the Kallis group have ended up on various blacklists, with organizations like Greenpeace and Human Rights Watch. For several years Mauri Kallis was a pariah, and had no interests in Sweden. No investor was willing to risk being linked to him. But about a year ago things changed. A year ago he was on the cover of Business Week; the article was about mining. And shortly after that Dagens Nyheter, the daily paper, did a big profile on him.”

  “Why did things change?” asked Anna-Maria. “Had they mended their ways?”

  “I don’t think so. I think it’s just that…well, there are just too many companies with interests in these countries that are doing more or less the same thing. And if everybody’s dodgy, in the end nobody’s dodgy, somehow. And they get fed up with painting the same picture as well. All of a sudden they need to write about this incredibly successful, energetic entrepreneur.”

  “Just like the reality shows,” said Anna-Maria. “At the beginning there’s one particular character everybody loves to hate, and the newspapers write about how Olinda makes her fellow contestants cry ‘hate shock attack’ on all the placards. Then it’s as if they get tired of hating her, and she suddenly turns into Madonna, she isn’t a bitch, it’s just girl power.”

  “And it’s easy to write about his successes too, because it’s such a fairy tale,” said Rebecka. “Built up his fortune from precisely nothing. The worst start in life imaginable. And now he owns an estate in Södermanland and is married to a woman from the nobility, Ebba von Uhr. Well, she isn’t nobility any longer, not since she married Mauri Kallis.”

  “Aha,” said Anna-Maria. “So the nobility gene is dominant only on the male side. Children?”

  “Two, one’s ten and the other’s twelve.”

  Anna-Maria suddenly came to life.

  “We need to check the national motor vehicle database,” she said. “I want to know what car he drives. Or cars.”

  “We’re not playing games here,” said Sven-Erik, turning attentively toward Rebecka. “What you were saying about mining…what do you mean by saying mining is different from all this business of concessions and experimental drilling?”

  “Running a mine is a completely different matter. You have to be aware of another country’s environmental laws, company laws, employment laws, administration laws, tax laws…”

  “Okay,” said Anna-Maria, holding up her hand in a defensive gesture.

  “In certain countries you come up against problems because the systems don’t run smoothly, or simply don’t work the way they do in the Western world. Problems with unions, with entrepreneurs, with getting all the permissions you need from the authorities, it can be difficult to deal with the corruption, you don’t have the necessary contacts…”

  “Permission to do what?”

  “Everything. Permission to mine, permission to pollute the water, to build roads, construction—just about everything, in fact. You have to build up a completely different kind of organization. And you have an employer’s responsibility. You become…how shall I put it…you become part of a society, of the country where you’re starting up your business. And you also create a society, around your mine. Usually there’s nothing there, a stony desert or a jungle. And then a little town grows up around your mine. Families. Children who need to go to school. It’s interesting that he suddenly turned into that kind of entrepreneur…”

  “What was Inna Wattrang’s role in the company?” wondered Anna-Maria.

  “She was employed by the parent company, Kallis Mining, but worked throughout the entire group. Sat on a lot of the company boards. She was a lawyer, and had read a good deal of company financial law, but I don’t get the impression that she worked on legal issues affecting the company. They’ve had a Canadian company lawyer working for the parent company; he’s spent more than thirty years in the mining and oil industries, and he takes care of that sort of thing.”

  “She was a lawyer. But you didn’t know her from before?”

  “No, no, she was older than me and there are several hundred who start every year. And she studied in Stockholm. I was in Uppsala.”

  “So what exactly did she do?” asked Anna-Maria.

  “She dealt with information about the company, and with the financing.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Okay, let’s say Mauri Kallis finds an area where he can buy con
cessions—that is, the right to do experimental drilling for gold or diamonds or whatever. That can be very expensive. Because drilling for minerals is such a high-risk project, he might have a lot of money one day and very little the next, so perhaps he himself can’t release the capital he needs. And as I said, there’s virtually no bank in the world that’s willing to lend money for this kind of activity. So he needs finance. People or investment companies who want to buy shares in the project. Sometimes you need to go on promotional tours, trying to sell ideas. It’s also important to have a good reputation within the industry. She helped him to build up a good reputation and goodwill, and she was obviously very good on the finance side. Her brother Diddi Wattrang works on finance as well. Mauri Kallis himself is more involved at the heart of things: sniffing out interesting projects, negotiating, closing deals. And recently on the industrial side too, the actual mining.”

  “I wonder what kind of man he is,” said Anna-Maria, suddenly feeling slightly nervous at the prospect of meeting him in just a few hours.

  Stop it, she said to herself. He’s only a person.

  “There was an interview on the Net that I downloaded, have a look at that,” said Rebecka. “It’s good. Inna Wattrang’s there too. I haven’t found much information about her otherwise. She isn’t a celebrity in industrial circles, unlike Kallis.”

  The program lasts an hour. An interview from September 2004. Malou von Sivers meets Mauri Kallis. Malou von Sivers should be pleased. She is interviewed herself before the program and stresses just how pleased she is. It’s a marketing ploy. The viewer is told that TV4 has sold the program to no fewer than twelve overseas media companies. Many people have wanted to interview Mauri Kallis, but he has turned them all down since ’95.

  Malou is asked, why has he agreed to be interviewed by her. For many reasons, she believes. Partly because he probably felt he had to give an interview; his growing celebrity status demanded it. And even if you work on the principle “Work but don’t be seen,” you have to be seen sometimes. Otherwise it looks as if you’re afraid to come out into the open. Partly because he wanted to do a Swedish interview. To show some kind of solidarity with his homeland.

  And Malou von Sivers treats her interviewees with respect; that probably played its part.

  “I know he feels I’ll be well prepared and take it seriously,” she says candidly.

  The journalist interviewing her is somewhat provoked by this self-confidence, and asks if Malou thinks the fact that she’s a woman is significant. Perhaps it was a tactical choice? A way of bringing a softer element into the company’s goodwill profile? Mining is recognized as an extremely male-dominated area, and a little…how shall we put it…coarse in some way. Malou von Sivers doesn’t speak for a little while. And she isn’t smiling either.

  “Or perhaps it’s because I’m very good,” she says at last.

  When the program begins, Malou von Sivers, Inna Wattrang and Inna’s brother Jacob “Diddi” Wattrang are sitting in a reception room at the Regla estate, which has been owned by the Kallis family for the past thirteen years.

  Mauri Kallis has been delayed; the company’s Beech B200 wasn’t able to take off in time from Amsterdam. Malou von Sivers has decided to begin the interview with Inna and Diddi; it will give the program a good dynamic.

  The brother and sister are sitting in armchairs, leaning back comfortably. Both are wearing white shirts with the sleeves rolled up, and big man’s watches. They are very alike with their distinctive noses, the high bridge of the nose between the eyes, and their pale blond hair cut in a bob. They also move in a similar way, have the same way of distractedly brushing the hair out of their eyes.

  Rebecka watched them and thought there was a faint but clearly perceptible sensual signal in that way of brushing aside the hair, the fingers following the strand of hair right to the end. On their way back to the knee or the arm of the chair, the tips of the fingers fleetingly brushed the chin or the mouth.

  Anna-Maria watched the same movements and thought they were always bloody fiddling with their faces, just like junkies.

  “Shall I get you some coffee before I go?” asked Rebecka.

  Sven-Erik Stålnacke and Anna-Maria Mella nodded, their eyes fixed on the monitor.

  I ought to work on that kind of body language, thought Rebecka on her way to the coffee machine. That’s what’s wrong with me. No sensual signals at all.

  Then she had to smile. If she carried on like that in front of Måns Wenngren, he’d think she was picking at her zits.

  Malou von Sivers’s hands are not moving. She’s a professional. Her copper-colored fringe has been thoroughly sprayed, and stays exactly where it’s meant to be.

  MALOU VON SIVERS: So you live here on the estate.

  DIDDI WATTRANG [laughing]: Oh, that sounds terrible—like some sort of commune.

  INNA WATTRANG [also laughing and placing her hand over Malou’s in a friendly way]: You can move in if you like!

  MALOU VON SIVERS: But seriously, isn’t it difficult sometimes? You work closely together. And you live close together.

  DIDDI WATTRANG: Not that close, in fact. The property is very large. My family and I live in what used to be the farm foreman’s house—you can’t even see it from here.

  INNA WATTRANG: And I live in the old laundry.

  MALOU VON SIVERS: Tell me how you two met up with Mauri Kallis!

  DIDDI WATTRANG: Mauri and I were at Business School together in the eighties. Mauri belonged to the small group of students who’d started speculating on the stock market, and used to hang about under the stock market monitor outside the pub as soon as trading started.

  INNA WATTRANG: That was very unusual at the time, trading in securities. Not like nowadays.

  DIDDI WATTRANG: And Mauri was very good.

  INNA WATTRANG [leaning forward with a teasing smile]: And Diddi talked his way in.

  DIDDI WATTRANG [ giving his sister a playful push]: “Talked his way in!” We became friends.

  INNA WATTRANG [pretending to be serious]: “They became friends!”

  DIDDI WATTRANG: And I put in a little capital…

  MALOU VON SIVERS: Did you get rich?

  Half a second of silence.

  Oops, thought Anna-Maria, trying to drink the coffee Rebecka had sneaked in with. It was far too hot. You mustn’t talk about money. It’s vulgar.

  DIDDI WATTRANG: By student standards, yes of course. He had such a good instinct, even in those days. Bought big in Hennes & Mauritz in 1984, hit the bull’s-eye with Skanska, Sandvik, SEB…his timing was perfect nearly all the time. At the end of the eighties a lot of the market was about commodities, and he was a demon for finding the next thing that was going to go up in value. Property became important when we were about halfway through our studies. I remember when Anders Wall came and gave a lecture, and advised us all to buy property in inner-city Stockholm. By that time Mauri had already moved out of his student room, bought a rental contract, converted it to a tenancy agreement, and had a two-room apartment that he lived in himself and two one-room apartments that he rented out, and the difference between them gave him enough money to live on.

  MALOU VON SIVERS: The press call him the whiz kid, the prodigy, the financial genius from nowhere…

  INNA WATTRANG: He’s still the same. Long before China got involved, he was prospecting for peridot in Greenland. Then he had both LKAB and China down on their knees begging to buy the deposits.

  MALOU VON SIVERS: Perhaps you could explain to those of us who are not familiar with the story.

  INNA WATTRANG: You need peridot to make iron into steel. He realized before anybody else that the steel market here was just going to go through the roof when China got involved.

  DIDDI WATTRANG: He was absolutely sure of China. Long before everybody else.

  It’s February 1985. Diddi Wattrang is in his first year at Business School. He’s not a natural student. But the pressure from home has been considerable, both on him and on his
teachers. His mother has invited the ladies of the area to the summer concert which is held at the beginning of August every year, outdoors of course, you don’t let just anybody inside the house. For those who have been invited it is still one of the high points of the year; they are happy to pay the small amount for their ticket; after all, the money always goes toward the maintenance of the cultural and historical value of the house, it’s almost a charitable cause, there’s always a roof that needs repairing and walls to be replastered. And as they’re mingling afterwards, Mama makes a point of saying firmly to Diddi’s French teacher: “The family regard him as a very gifted student.” Papa is on excellent terms with the principal of the school, but the principal knows it’s a question of give and take. It’s nice to be friends with the lord of the manor, but of course it doesn’t come free.

  Diddi has got through high school somehow, cheating a little here, borrowing there. You can always find hardworking but dull people who will exchange help with essays and exams for a little bit of attention. A win-win deal.

  He does have one talent, does Diddi. He’s easy to like. Tilts his head to one side so that his long blond fringe isn’t in his eyes when he’s talking to someone. Genuinely seems to like everyone, especially the person he’s talking to at the time. Laughs with both his mouth and his eyes, reaching out and touching people’s hearts with such care and ease.

  Now it’s Mauri Kallis’s turn to feel chosen and special. It’s a Wednesday evening and they’re hanging out in the student bar. It’s as if they’ve been friends for ages. Diddi ignores a pretty blonde girl who’s sitting and laughing just a fraction too loudly with her friends a little way off, glancing in their direction. He says hi to loads of people who come over and want to chat. But that’s all; this evening does not belong to them.