She pulled off her shoes, and put the bag right in the middle of the floor. Then she went inside and sat down in a basket chair near the crackling fireplace.
Modin stayed put by the door.
“We could grill some hot dogs, Modin. Like two scouts. Then we can fall asleep on the floor hugging. I’ve grown tired of the hotel and all that luxury food. This is for real and you’re here, my strong and silent man.”
She laughed again and turned toward Modin who was still scraping the ice off the threshold to be able to shut the door properly.
“It’s going to be fish,” he said. “Garlic pike, which is an Estonian specialty. The President of Estonia served that dish when his Swedish counterpart, Carl Bildt, came to visit his summer cottage on the island of Noarootsi.”
Modin came back in.
“What was our ex-Prime Minister doing in Estonia? On an island? What was he doing there, of all places?”
“Well, they were going to discuss the Russian military withdrawal from Estonia. This was August 1994. Just one month before the M/S Estonia sank.”
Kim was silent. She looked at Modin with sad eyes.
“Do you often think about that disaster?”
“Yes.” He sat down on the couch opposite her, leaned back, his hands behind his head. “Every day. Does it matter?”
“No, not to me, but how do you get by?” Kim stretched out her hand, picked up a log between thumb and index finger, and slung it into the fire. It began to hiss.
“It’s hard to explain,” came Modin’s reply. He thought for a moment, let his gaze sweep across his inbuilt shelving, which was crammed with history books and adventure novels. “It’s become part of my life. I don’t know how I can ever get away from it. It’s always there in the background, maybe always will be. I even burnt my notes. That didn’t help. It doesn’t feel as if I’ve had any real closure. That’s the problem. That and the recurring memories.”
“Garlic pike, sounds exciting,” Kim said. “Are you from Estonia, Modin?”
“My parents fled Estonia across the Baltic Sea back in 1944—on September 28, to be exact. That was when the Soviets re-occupied Estonia. Hitler had liberated, or whatever you prefer to call it, the Estonians in 1941. Estonia was supposed to become a free independent nation again. That, at least, was the official message the Nazis spread—a country free from Stalinist terror and Communism, a new Estonia with its own culture. That is why so many young men volunteered to join the German army; they wanted to liberate the Baltic. They were supporting the enemy of their enemy. Not everyone did, of course. The Estonian Communists protested, because they wanted to stick with the Russians; they celebrated when Stalin defeated Hitler in 1944. At that time, the academics and many other with influence started to feel threatened and fled to Sweden. My father was among them.”
“Tell me more about your parents, Modin.”
“My father’s family operated a large farm in the south-east of Estonia, in the province of Setumaa. They raised livestock and worked in forestry, as did many Estonians in those days. When the Russians arrived, they nationalized the farm and poor Russians were allowed to move in instead. My grandmother sent my father to the West—to Sweden, to be exact—just before the Russians invaded. He was the only academic in the family, and she wanted to make sure he’d be able to use his education. Others fled to Finland, many to the U.S. My grandmother was already pretty old at the time and chose to stay on the farm.”
“And how did things turn out for her?”
“Pretty good, really. She was given a little outhouse, while the Cossacks took over the farm and the main building. But she survived, longer than she had imagined. Unfortunately, my father never saw her again. She died sometime in the 1980s, alone in her cold outhouse in what was then the Soviet Union. Family members who had fled the country were not allowed to attend the funeral. That made my father very bitter. He could never get over the fact that he had abandoned his own mother. All he had left were a few letters.”
“What else could he have done,” Kim said.
Modin saw her bright profile by the light of the fire. The rest of her face was deep in shadow.
“Nothing, really. His mother had made him leave so he could make a better life for himself in the West. That’s what parents do; they sacrifice themselves for their kids.” Modin paused. “Then, later, his conscience caught up with him. I could see it. We never talked about his home or his family. I was not even allowed to see a photograph of my grandmother. She simply didn’t exist.”
Modin said nothing more, awaiting a reaction. He had never mentioned this to anyone else. These were family secrets.
“Go on, Anton. I want to hear everything.” Kim curled up on the couch.
“My mother was Estonian, too, but I don’t know much about her background, to be honest. They just didn’t like talking about their past on the East. My parents met in Sweden years after they had left their home country and got married quickly. I was born in 1965; I was their only child. The first time I ever saw my father’s farm was in 1994, when I took Monica, my wife, and our two children, Ellinor and Alexander, to Estonia. A high barbed-wire fence surrounded the farm, so we could only see the house from a distance. That felt terrible. Even in 1994, there were mostly Russians on the farm.”
“But why was that? I thought the Russians had withdrawn. I thought everyone got their property back?”
“No, all we got was the land on the Estonian side, but they had shifted the national border back to what it used to be under Stalin. Probably to keep the famous 15th century monastery in Petseri, or Pechory, as they call it in Russian, for Russia. There may very well have been military reasons, too. It felt very sad indeed not being able to reach the house where my father was born.”
“Was Pechory a Russian-speaking area?”
“No. Stalin took over 75% of the Pechory province when he occupied the sovereign state of Estonia in 1944. The Germans were retreating from the Baltic countries back then to focus on other fronts. That’s how we lost Pechory forever. The Province of Pechory has always been Estonian, but it has a mixed culture now. The Russian Orthodox Church, for example, speaks of he Russian cultural influence. The original border had been decided in the Treaty of Tartu in 1920, when Estonia became independent.”
“Estonia has such a tragic history. Independent as a nation, strong and full of its own culture, but rarely its own master. I’ve heard that Estonia has even been Swedish once!”
“Yes, that’s true enough: from 1561 to 1721, when Carl XII lost it to Russia. Then it was Russian up to the end of the World War I. Estonia proclaimed its independence in 1920, and was a free nation until the Russians invaded again in 1940, at the beginning of World War II.”
“So Estonia only enjoyed twenty years of independence,” Kim said.
“The first time around, yes. But next year, in 2011, the country will pass the twenty-year-mark in its second period of independence. I hope they’ll be celebrating. Independence is not to be taken for granted. Not by a long shot.”
Modin got up and threw another log on the fire.
“What did it feel like to see your parents’ home?”
“I saw my roots through the barbed wire. Not everyone got freedom though. Not those inside the fence. Nor my father. Not in his heart. He died the same year that the M/S Estonia sank, in December 1994. I don’t know whether the two events were somehow connected. I know he gave up then. He was never happy in Sweden. When things went so wrong for me, and when he lost his beloved grandchildren, he simply couldn’t go on any longer.”
“Are you on your way to a similar fate, Modin? You left your wife and two children behind on that ferry. Do you have a reason to go on?”
Modin looked up. He was surprised at Kim’s insight, and even more so because she addressed the issue openly. Most people tiptoed around the subject. His eyes filled with tears, but he continued telling the story. “It is ironic that my family drowned exactly fifty years after my father fled Estonia in a small fishing b
oat, on September 28, 1944. Exactly fifty years. To the day. Imagine that, Kim.”
CHAPTER 43
Kim devoured her fish. Modin had braised the pike in the oven using a large amount of onion and garlic and then poured unsweetened whipped cream on top. Modin served the traditional local, rather floury potatoes from the Norrtelje province and a salad with a splash of olive oil. They had a white Bourgogne, sparkling mineral water, and a small glass of exclusive French Goose vodka.
“Delicious, Modin, how tasty!” Kim said, her mouth still full of food.
“As I said, this is a special Estonian dish, although the garlic is a French addition, but the rest is Estonian.” He laughed. “The cream is to prevent the fish from getting too dry, and the garlic masks the rather strong pike flavor. So what remains is the nice white flesh of the fish.”
“Really delicious,” Kim said and wiped her full lips with a napkin.
“Tell me something about yourself, Kim.” Modin put down his glass with care. “Do you miss Jonas very much?”
“Not really. I’m ashamed to say, but I’m fine without him.”
“Didn’t you love him?”
“Can you love someone who abuses you, someone you abuse? Our relationship was one of mutual exploitation. He wanted my body, I wanted his money. I just didn’t realize that I’d been caught in a nightmare. I’m glad it’s over now.”
“Do you have any idea who might have killed him?” Modin looked into her eyes—they seemed like the eyes of an innocent doe.
“No, I don’t.”
“Do you think the men he…” Modin couldn’t quite finish the sentence. “Can you tell me more about the people you fraternized with?”
“Do you really want to hear about all that, Modin? It’s so… I don’t want to ruin what we have. I like being with you. I feel secure and calm with you.”
“It could be important, Kim. You too might be in danger. Tell me what you know. I am not a stranger to investigations.” Modin drank some more of his wine. “Tell me about the parties. What were they like?”
“You would not believe me if I told you. These men—because most of the people we fraternized with were men, except for one woman, the Minister of Justice—led secret lives. They are cold, calculating, professional, if you like, and inhuman—as if from another planet. They are ruthless, arrogant, sycophantic, and above all, untrustworthy. They’ll drop you like a hot potato as soon as you’re no longer of any use or joy to them.”
“I know,” Modin said. “It’s like that in the intelligence world. If you fail them or squeal, you’re out.”
“The former President was one of them.”
“Which one? Bush?”
“No, Clinton. He was a horny bastard, but nice about it.”
“You’re not trying to tell me you’ve screwed the U.S. President?”
Modin’s jaw dropped.
“I’ve had sex with some of the biggest movers and shakers in the world. I gave Bill Clinton a blowjob in the Oval Office. The Swedish Embassy had invited Jonas and me to improve international business relations, as it was put politely. That time it was all about the JAS fighter plane and its armaments.”
Modin noticed that Kim’s expression had changed; she was dark, cold, and remote. He didn’t like it one bit.
“I was very young then. Clinton wanted to come in my face. God knows how many young women he drenched with his sperm. That was all. Then he thanked me politely, pulled up his fly, handed me a few paper tissues from the table drawer, and left the room. He was a sex addict. They all are. Couldn’t stop, and that’s what we exploited. A few months later, Jonas was given permission to establish his company in the U.S., and then Sweden was granted new technology for the JAS fighter plane.”
“Fuck, Kim. You blew the President so that Jonas could register his business in the U.S. Is that how the world is run? By fellatio?”
“Yup.”
“Kim, I… You don’t need to tell me any more details. Really.”
“Some of them were sadists. Some wanted access to every orifice. They were hard, without feelings, like animals. Then they would vanish. Some of them wanted me to whip them with a belt while tied to the bed; that was quite popular. I think they used sex to release the pressure, instead of alcohol or drugs, but often they used that, too.”
Kim went on talking. It looked like she wanted to. Wanted to ease her guilty conscience.
“Do you have this all documented?”
“Yes, everything.”
“Did you record any videos?”
“Yes, several times.”
“And then Jonas used the documentation for blackmail?”
“I think so.”
“Incredible, Kim. I thought I’d heard it all. No wonder that Jonas got his hands cut off. How exactly did you manage to record these rendezvous?”
“Well,” Kim said, as if getting ready to give a lecture. “Either I wore a wire hidden on my person, or I would hide a camera in my pocket book. We used rather advanced equipment, so it was small and hard to recognize. Jonas would watch and edit all the material.”
“Do you know where this equipment is today?”
“Not for certain, but I’d assume it’s in our summer house in Torekov. That’s where he would hide things.”
Kim looked up at Modin and smiled. The talk of dirty sex had made him blush. She seemed to like that.
“Kim, your company—the fiber optic cable project in particular—I have thought about it a little and I think that maybe that was what killed Jonas.”
“Are you changing the subject because you are embarrassed?”
“ No… maybe… I don’t know.”
“Actually, that’s really sweet, Modin.”
“Thanks. But seriously, Jonas’ project may be more dangerous than I first thought.
“Doesn’t matter. I have decided to terminate that business anyway. The cable project will not take off this summer. At least not with my money.”
“Are you sure? If CIA and NSA is involved, they won’t just let you go that easily.”
“I don’t care. I won’t sponsor the CIA eavesdropping on the Russians.”
For a moment, Kim looked upset. Modin decided to let the subject be for a while.
“Let’s have our dessert now, Modin. I get depressed talking about all this, but at the same time, it feels good to do it.”
Modin got up and got some vanilla ice-cream and raspberry jelly. But the only thing he could think about was Bill Clinton coming all over Kim’s full breasts while Jonas Zetterman watched on a monitor.
CHAPTER 44
So, let me get this straight,” Modin said after a couple of glasses of wine. He couldn’t let go of the subject. Especially not when he was getting drunk.
“You used recorded sex scenes with these bigwigs in politics and business for blackmail? What is it you wanted in exchange for your silence?”
“I didn’t want anything. All this was Jonas’ idea. And at first, everything Jonas said sounded great. We were the good guys and the lecherous old men were the bad guys. I believed what he said. And so I did what he made me do. I really had no choice. If you’d known Jonas, you would understand. Nobody said ‘no’ to Jonas. Nobody. He had that power over you.”
Modin noted that Kim ate her ice-cream with delight while she told her story.
“You always have a choice, Kim.”
“You don’t understand. You’re a man. You’re always in control. I’m a woman. We’re not in control. Believe me, you can’t always do what you want if you’re living with a psychopath.”
“Jonas was a psychopath?”
“I think so. We often talked about his mood swings. He would always blame everybody else; nothing was ever his fault. He tried to put me down whenever he got the opportunity. He was infallible. At least in his own estimation.”
“Who was he working for? The CIA?”
“I really don’t know. I’ve wondered many times. The people who used to drop in were from all over the
globe. One day it was an Englishman, the next a German. It was all very secretive. But I honestly don’t know. That was his secret. He never told me.”
“But Clinton. How did Jonas gain access to the President of the United States? Didn’t he have bodyguards, adjutants? Surely, the President must be surrounded by an entourage. How could you two get close enough for you to have sex with him? It sounds unbelievable.”
“Yes, I know. I think that was part of the idea. No one would believe it. For here is the thing: The President’s staff was in on the game. It seemed as if they were steering him, as if he lacked a will of his own. As long as they gave him what he wanted, he was satisfied—fast cars, young chicks, parties. He was hooked on it all. It was all so decadent. The only people around him who were not mixed up in all this were his bodyguards; they were exchanged at regular intervals, too fast, I guess, to be party to this.”
“So you are saying that the U.S. President was putty in somebody else’s hands? Who was pulling his strings?”
“There was a woman at the Swedish Embassy who seemed to be arranging most contacts. Everybody listened to her. She introduced me to the President.”
“Do you know her name?”
“I don’t know…”
“Please, Kim.”
“They called her Barbro? I don’t recall her surname.”
“Barbro? Are you sure?” Cold shivers ran down his spine. The name transported him right back to the previous summer and the horrific events that left so many people dead.
“Yes, I am. I dealt with her several times.”
“What did she look like?” He could feel his face got flushed. Could it be that Kim had dealt with the woman controlling the Barbro Team? While Crack of Dawn, the most secret organization that Sweden had ever seen, and all its splinter groups had supposedly been disbanded, the Barbro Team still seemed to exist.
“Why, is she important?”
Modin nodded.
“Well she was about sixty-five, well-toned, rather chubby but muscular, small breasts, dark hair, short neck, cold, snakelike eyes, and she spoke with a very pronounced Stockholm accent. The well articulated upmarket version that is spoken in upscale Östermalm, where the embassies are, to the north of the city center.”
Under Water (Anton Modin Book 3) Page 13