“I’m okay. I’ll get by. I would be better if all those police officers and security guards were gone. My husband was a douchebag, I know, but he was my husband, after all. I don’t know whether I’ll miss him, but right now, I wish he was still here and all this madness would go away.”
Modin was surprised at Kim’s straightforwardness. She must trust me; she definitely must, Modin thought and sipped his coffee.
“Would you like some coffee?”
“No, I’m all right thank you.” She combed through her hair with her hands and started braiding it in order to keep it lying flat in her neck. When she lifted her arm, her sweater tightened over her breasts. Her beauty and sex appeal didn’t fail to affect him, although sex was the last thing he wanted to think about right now.
“Do you need help? Anything. Just say the word. I have loads of time to listen.”
“I thought you were trying to solve the M/S Estonia puzzle,” Kim said.
“That can wait. I have my whole life to go after that mystery, but you are here right now. How long do you intend to stay on the island?
“I don’t really know. Maybe forever.” She laughed, her mouth wide open, and Modin noticed her row of straight white teeth.
“I’m the sole owner of an empire—a little young blonde with a lot of power and riches. I’m also completely alone. Word will get around in no time and some conman will come around and try to scam me. I need a strong man by my side, Anton. Someone to protect me from all evil.”
She laughed again and looked deep into Modin’s eyes, holding his gaze for just a tad too long. He was embarrassed, turned away, and glanced over to the reception desk. He felt stupid. He could see that the power had already gotten to her. She knew the ropes. She had the upper hand.
“I see that you’ve had a shave. I prefer you with a little stubble.” She ran her fingers gently over his cheek. “It’s more like you.”
Modin could see an officer from the Security Service standing at the counter, flirting with the curly haired receptionist. He was leaning on his elbows on the reception desk and was trying to make contact. Modin guessed he was suggesting to her that it was lonely out here in the winter.
“When’s the funeral?”
“When the autopsy has taken place and I get the okay from the police. We will bury him out here. We’re registered here. It’s our home now, or mine at least.”
“There’ll be lots of people. And it’ll be a media frenzy, too. Have you thought about that?”
“Others can deal with them. I have employees who will deal with them.”
“What’s going to happen with your husband’s business?”
“I don’t know. I have an appointment with some specialist or other next week. He’s supposed to help me with the more sensitive side of Jonas’ business.”
“You mean his business with Defense?”
“Could be. I don’t know much about all that. He said it was very important—for Sweden. Strange man. I think his name was Loklinth.”
Modin jumped. He had that sinking feeling. He had wanted to forget about Loklinth, but the man kept turning up like a bad penny. As soon as something was up, Loklinth was lurking in the shadows. Suddenly he felt sick.
“Loklinth? He is an investigator, not a businessman. What does he want other than ask about the murder?” Modin said.
“He wants to discuss the future prospects of the firm. He will bring along a consultant, he said. He says he wants to help. Do you think I shouldn’t trust him?”
“Well, we’ll see. I know Loklinth; we’ve worked together. Get in touch with me when he and his consultant have been here. You may need someone to bounce off his ideas, or just a shoulder to cry on. Loklinth can be a tough nut.”
He faked a smile. Inside, he was boiling with rage. I’ll get Loklinth, and soon, he promised himself. Once and for all. I have to get peace.
CHAPTER 30
GRISSLEHAMN, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 30
The Sea of Åland had frozen over.
Anton Modin slept until dawn. When he woke up, it was already half past eight on the day before New Year’s Eve. He peeked out of the window at the winter stillness and the flurries of snow coming from inland. The rough winds were gone, but the bluish ice now lay at the otherwise angry and thundering sea.
He slowly made his way out of bed. He needed to move around. His muscles were stiff and his head felt like a deflated football from despair.
I need to find something meaningful to do today, he thought. I can’t just sit here waiting for something that may never come—permission to dive to the M/S Estonia. Maybe I have to move on; if there is radioactivity on the wreckage indeed, I might very well be killed. So, the idea of diving after the truth is sheer suicide.
“You’ve got to take control of your fate before it takes control of you,” he murmured to himself as he stumbled to the sink with his coffee cup.
“Fuck,” he said to himself. I need something to get me going. To take me out of bed in the morning, to help me survive!
“Whoops!” He nearly stepped on Miss Mona. She was lying on the floor by the sink. “Well, good morning to you, my dear young lady. Hungry, maybe? Of course you are, you’re always hungry. I love you, dear.”
The cat rubbed up against his leg with her back arched and her tail in the air; she was so strong and he was so stiff that he stumbled again. He looked at Miss Mona and smiled. She was a fat, gray, longhair mongrel, both independent and devoted at the same time. In cat terms, that is. He was happy to have her. Better than no company at all. Much better.
After breakfast, Modin went out to the mailbox to pick up the morning paper.
By the time he was back in the house, he felt ecstatic. He had received a letter-sized envelope with a private return address. It had not been postmarked in Sweden. He put the newspaper on the coffee table in the main room on top of the mail, which included a few bills as well. Something told him that this letter was important. He hesitated, wondering whether he should open it immediately or not. Something told him it had something to do with the M/S Estonia. He could sense it.
His friends and former colleagues at Special Ops had said that Modin had psychic powers. He didn’t think so himself, but his mother had had the gift. She would wake up in the morning and sense danger, and more often than not she was right. She could feel it. Maybe he had inherited these qualities, after all. He often happened to be right when venturing a guess. Personally, he thought it was but a question of interpreting signals the right way. Everyone receives signals, all the time; the secret is trusting your gut and daring to follow where the signals point you.
He weighed the brown envelope in his hand. It had been postmarked in Estonia, at the port of Paldiski, to be exact. He squeezed it. Then he went to the kitchen and turned on the espresso machine. He needed a cup of coffee first.
As he was about to sit down to open the letter he received a text message from Bergman:
Have something important to tell you. Been visited by the President’s men. Assignment from the Americans. Lots of money, very important! Will be visiting you first week in January. BB
CHAPTER 31
GRISSLEHAMN, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 30
Modin was standing far out on the cliffs at Skatudden. The wind cut right through his clothes. In the distance, he could see Matti Svensson’s white house hanging over the cliff. Smoke was coming from the chimney.
Why did Matti Svensson never write an exposé of the M/S Estonia Affair? He lives right on the sea lane where the vessel sank. He ought to know the power of words. Am I the only one who remembers what happened? Does nobody care?
Modin looked at the ice mist far away on the horizon until his eyes teared up. To the north, a Russian ship was waiting for its pilot at the Svartklubbens pilot station. To the south, the passenger ferry, which, this time of year, sailed half-empty, was making its way to Eckerö in the Åland Isles. Between these vessels was a stretch of snow-covered ice, like a lid on the sea with narrow cracks e
mitting vapor. Those were the sea lanes. Here and there, the occasional cliff stuck up its head, creating small, smooth and rounded islets. Modin was wondering how long the sea lanes would stay open in the intense cold.
We’ll soon need icebreakers from Stockholm, he thought.
Sea of Åland seen from the cliffs of Skatudden in Grisslehamn.
The cold northwesterly wind bit into his cheeks. He was forced to retreat back into the forest—the lee of the land where he could walk home in a more sheltered environment. On his way back, he decided he would open the letter he had left behind on the kitchen table.
He had not been able to open the letter even once the espresso was done brewing. He was just standing there for a while, looking at the old-fashioned style of the handwriting. A strange chill had spread through his chest, and he decided to a walk to escape the fit of panic, nausea, or even sorrow that had threatened to overcome him.
Time to grab the bull by the horns, even if this wasn’t his permission to dive down to the M/S Estonia. Although Filipson said he shouldn’t dive due to the radioactivity on board, Modin suspected that the real reason was that the M/S Estonia had been a victim of a conspiracy. Although he often wavered, even despaired sometimes, he was not really going to deviate from the plan that helped him get out of bed in the morning. He owed it not only to his own family but to all 852 victims of the disaster. He had to solve the mystery one way or another. But how?
Should he start in Estonia? Question the Estonian authorities? He did have an Estonian background, spoke the language rather fluently, and still had relatives there. Perhaps they would be more open and prepared to let him look at the murky waters of the affair.
The letter had been sent from Paldiski. Maybe it was there that the answer lay. The former secret Soviet naval base was less than two hundred miles away from Stockholm.
Modin kicked a small chunk of ice on the road. He could hardly feel his freezing toes any more and hurried home as fast as he could. The M/S Estonia had made its last voyage on September 27, 1994, which was the fiftieth anniversary of Russia’s re-occupation of Estonia in 1944. At that point in history, Soviet forces had defeated the Germans and turned Estonians from Nazis into Communists overnight.
Was this date a coincidence?
Paldiski had been a secret submarine base. Modin knew that there had been secret storage facilities for submarines in the rocks. The Russian military did not leave the base until the latter half of 1994, although Estonia had been independent since 1991.
Was there a connection between the shipwreck, the Russians’ exit from Estonia, and the arrival of NATO, all in the same year?
CHAPTER 32
Modin sat down at his kitchen table and ripped open the brown envelope. It had been sealed with Scotch tape. Inside were several handwritten sheets of paper. He took them out, and started reading.
Armas Anton,
I am writing to you about the ship, the M/S Estonia. My father, who is on his deathbed, asked me to reach out to you. He used to work for the Estonian Foreign Ministry during and after the time the ship sank. He retired in 1996.
He wants you to know that the ship did not sink for the reasons that have been made public. This is his story for you to read:
The Commander of the Estonian Armed Forces, Alexander Einseln, who was appointed in the early 1990s during Estonia’s budding independence, was a U.S. agent. That is to say, he represented American rather than Estonian interests. He only got the job after great pressure was exerted by both the USA and NATO. Einseln was assisted by a number of individuals within the Estonian Security Service. The Americans wanted to access Soviet military technology that was still on Estonian territory. The material was not actually moved until 1994. A large portion of this military materiel was either stolen or bought illegally and then smuggled to Sweden on the M/S Estonia. This included radar stations, midget submarines, anti-aircraft radar, signals intelligence material, and even nuclear warheads. Anything and everything was of interest.
In conjunction with the fact that the submarine base at Paldiski was to be shut down in 1994, large quantities of goods, including classified material, were being transported back from Estonia to Russia. As late as September 1994, a number of the larger Soviet submarines were still stationed in Paldiski. According to the military sources my father talked to, the evening that the M/S Estonia sank, smaller quantities of osmium and substances containing cobalt-60 and cesium-137 were loaded onto two trucks. The cargo was extremely heavy and was driven on board the M/S Estonia on the evening of September 27, 1994. The trucks belonged to an Estonian shipping company. The drivers were civilians, escorted by Estonian military personnel. According to rumor, that night’s cargo was material more important and strategically relevant than any before. That’s why NATO wants this to remain a highly classified mission.
Russian intelligence got wind of the operation from a customs officer, Igor Kristopovich. . By that time, it was already too late to stop the shipment. Kristopovich was supposedly able to follow the radio communications with the M/S Estonia. But there is no evidence, because he was murdered a few days after the shipwreck
Officially, there was no record of the radio traffic with the vessel, because all radio traffic in the area was knocked out between 01:03 hours and 01:58 hours Estonian time. Coincidentally, this is exactly the time window in which the M/S Estonia sank.
A military base on one of the islands off Paldiski always used to come into operation when Soviet submarines were patrolling the Baltic Sea or the Gulf of Finland. According to my father, this very station was in operation during the very night the M/S Estonia sank. That night, one of the larger Russian nuclear submarines was cruising in the vicinity.
My father believes that this has some connection with the sinking of the M/S Estonia.
He greets you: “Anton Modin, never give up searching for the truth.”
Yours sincerely,
Evy Andreson.
Modin put the letter aside and looked out through the frosty kitchen window. The hand holding the letter started to shake slightly. His mouth was dry and he felt a dull, persistent ache in his belly.
The M/S Estonia, a passenger ferry, had been utilized to transport military equipment, radar, and even nuclear weapons. Fuck! What did we think we were doing? How dare the intelligence services at the time abuse a civilian ferry? Why were such things not transported on military vessels or freighters? The M/S Estonia was carrying civilians and children!
Modin spread the handwritten sheets of paper over the surface of the table. The letter seemed genuine, but its contents were incredible. Trouble was, what the letter claimed pretty well matched the information he had found in the Special Ops metal box in the previous summer. And what was worse, it matched his own story, too, a story he had been trying hard to forget.
He himself had been on board that ferry on the night between September 27 and 28, 1994, and he had been in Estonia on a work assignment. Was I involved in all of this? he asked himself. I don’t remember. I only have a faint recollection with no structure to it. That was the only frustrating answer he had for the moment.
He got to his feet and his lower back cracked and creaked.
“Oh, shit!”
He decided, standing there with a hunched back, to take a trip to Estonia and talk to the witnesses. But how can I do that without either Special Ops or the Estonian Secret Service finding out?
If they’d find out, the witnesses he wanted to interview would be put under pressure to lie. He needed to investigate this without anyone breathing down his neck
He had to make a plan.
He scratched his head as a firework rocket flew over the treetops. It exploded in shades of violet and the sparks rained down over the trees at the edge of the woods. It had gotten dark and New Year’s Eve was approaching the next day.
CHAPTER 33
STOCKHOLM, GRAND HÔTEL, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 30
And if I refuse to cooperate?” Kim Zetterman asked. She was hol
ding a glass of white wine in her right hand, but had not yet taken a sip. “What happens then?”
“Dear Ms. Zetterman, I don’t think we need to discuss that possibility. We assume that both you and the Zetterman Business Group will cooperate willingly,” said Anders Glock. “For the sake of the company and the sake of Sweden. In fact, if I am honest, for the sake of everyone.”
“What do you mean?”‘
“I mean what I am saying. It is assumed that we will come to an agreement, you and me, so that your group will survive. For the sake of the people of Sweden, we have to continue what Jonas has started. That’s what I mean. Nothing more, nothing less. Just finish Jonas’ work.”
Kim looked down into her glass. Her cheeks flushed under a perfect layer of makeup.
Glock noticed a slight shiver going right through her body, but she was taking her time, despite his heavy breathing and penetrating gaze.
They were sitting in the hotel bar on the glazed porch of the Grand Hôtel, furthest in on the eastern side of the building. It was still early in the morning and so there were not many customers yet. A waiter dressed all in white walked by in full stride. He looked weary, as if he had been on his feet all night.
Kim Zetterman looked up focusing on a steamer at the quay. Anders Glock could see that the steamer didn’t have any passengers, but that smoke was coming from the chimney. The ship just sat there among crushed ice floes in the southern part of Blasieholmen Harbor opposite Strömbron dock and the Royal Palace.
“Humor me. What happens if I decide not to cooperate after all?” Kim asked again.
“We will come to an agreement, you and I. I’m quite sure of that, young lady. As you are aware, banks can be awkward, and the insurance company, even the Department of Trade, can become our adversaries. Without their approval, it can become difficult to do business in Sweden. Do I have to be any more specific, my sweet little friend.”
Under Water (Anton Modin Book 3) Page 10