“Come on in.”
She regretted the invite immediately.
He took off his shoes and headed straight for the kitchen, where he sat down without asking. She had made some coffee and baked some rolls. The aroma filled the two-room apartment, penetrating even through the closed door to Astrid’s empty room.
“Tell me what you know,” he said. “When did she disappear?”
“Last fall, in early September. When I went to pick her up from school, she wasn’t there. Someone had already picked her up. They didn’t know who.”
“How terrible.”
“You have no idea! At first, I thought that this can’t be happening to me. To us. We’re just ordinary people. Astrid is only eight years old.”
Svensson pulled out a notebook and turned on a micro tape recorder without asking.
Ewa Bergman nodded and drew her bathrobe more tightly around her body, adjusting the belt at the same time. The worry about her daughter had made her lose several pounds. She was slender and curvy, almost like she had been before her daughter was born, when she and Bill Bergman had been in love, and he had sworn into her chestnut-colored hair that he would never abandon his family. What happened, she wondered.
Svensson could have raised his eyes and studied her carefully. He could have taken note of her appearance, writing in his newspaper article about her pale complexion, the black rings under her eyes, and the sadness in her face. But he didn’t look up. She wouldn’t have allowed him to describe her like that. Nor to mention how her voice cracked as she offered a plate with fingers with chipped nail polish.
“Here. Have a roll.”
“And you haven’t heard anything at all from her?”
“No. Well yes, I received a postcard. But since then, we’ve heard nothing. I haven’t, at any rate.”
“A postcard? Could you show me?”
“It’s this one. Addressed to me. Just lists a telephone number. We don’t know whether it was Astrid who sent it.”
“Do you recognize the phone number?”
“Yes, that was my daughter’s first ever cell phone number. I’ll never forget that.” The tears welled up in her eyes and she turned her face away.
Svensson read the number 073-786-4427 in silence.
“Just like with the DC-3,” he said, and looked her straight in the eye. “You know, the plane that the Soviets shot down in 1952 over the Baltic Sea. The one that had an American intelligence officer onboard. One of the relatives of the crew, a woman I’ve interviewed, showed me a postcard from Moscow in the 1980s with exactly the same sort of cryptic message. I think the postcard she received listed her old address in some small town somewhere in the middle of Sweden. She believed that it had been sent by her husband. If that were true, he would still have been alive in 1982, although his plane had been shot down thirty years earlier. It does sound incredible.”
“My daughter’s alive,” Ewa Bergman said, pointing at her chest. “I’m sure. I can feel it right here inside.”
“If I’m not mistaken,” Svensson said, clearing his throat, “that’s exactly what that woman said when I interviewed her. She told me that deep down inside she knew he was alive, and that I should never stop searching for the truth. She said this, more or less, as if she knew that the remains of her husband would not be found on board the plane if it should ever be salvaged. The plane was indeed found in 2004, about a year after she died. Strange.”
“And? Did they find her husband’s remains?” Ewa asked.
“No,” Matti Svensson answered and cleared his throat again, “they didn’t. When they finally brought the wreck to the surface some six months later, all four members of the crew were missing, as was the American Intel officer who was on board. No one knows what happened to them.”
“So she was right. More coffee?”
“Yes, please.”
On the street outside, in Söder, Stockholm’s southern district, a bus drove by so that the panes of glass in the apartment windows rattled slightly.
Ewa Bergman’s thoughts started wandering. She rested her elbows on the kitchen table and daydreamed away. “I know that Astrid is alive somewhere. I’m not giving up. She knows I’m coming to get her one day.”
She looked at Matti Svensson, ready to place her daughter’s fate into his hands.. “Are you going to write about Astrid? About how she disappeared? You will be the first with the news. You can leave out my husband’s name. Bill doesn’t want the story to end up in the newspapers. He’s got nothing to do with any of this. We’re divorced. I’ve got custody.”
Ewa Bergman had a lump in her throat. It distorted her voice, making it sound sharp and forced.
“You can relax, Ewa. It’s going to be all right.” Matti Svensson was taking notes. “We’re going to find her. Yes, we are. Now, please tell me the whole story. You should know that both the tape recorder and I are good listeners.”
CHAPTER 43
GRISSLEHAMN, FRIDAY MAY 8, 8 A.M.
Girl from Roslagen Province kidnapped to America. Girl’s father and good friend suspects in the crime.
Oh for Christ’s sake! Look at this, Axman. We are going to have to head into Stockholm to defend ourselves.” Modin tossed his copy of the Norrtelje News to Axman. “What an amazing idiot! Matti Svensson has written a long article on how common it is in the U.S. that children are kidnapped and how they are used as organ donors or sold to rich, childless Americans. And his hook is the supposed abduction of Bergman’s daughter.”
“He nearly wiped you out last summer with false accusations of rape,” Axman said. “Not exactly what you would call a harmless journalist.”
“And now this KGB made nonsense about U.S. kidnappings all over again. I thought that had been denied ages ago. But I suppose it works in a local paper.”
“What are we going to do?” Axman asked. “Svensson’s article had put Bergman’s daughter in mortal danger. Maybe just as well to bring her back over here. Shall we get in touch with Ellie?”
Axman remembered Ellie well. She had been Modin’s summer flirt, a young, pretty and, most importantly, smart woman who had worked at The Rock as a waitress. Ellie could laugh both heartily and softly. She was an engaging person and Modin’s grim appearance had temporarily melted. Axman had no idea how Modin felt about her now, nor if they still had any kind of emotional bond. Be that as it may, Modin trusted Ellie, and so Axman would, too.
“How is Astrid?” Axman asked.
“Fine. It’s been a while since I last heard from Ellie. We try to minimize contact; the calls might be traced. Bergman doesn’t even know Astrid’s actual address, and that’s for reasons of safety. Ewa knows nothing. That’s pretty devastating for a mom. Can’t be much fun for her now that the whole business has hit the newspapers again. This have to be solved.”
“Is Bergman okay with the arrangement?”
“I don’t know. I have a feeling he understands. If they put pressure on him, he’ll truthfully deny knowing anything at all. It’s best that way.”
Modin didn’t sound convincing, Axman thought. Modin’s weary, sunken eyes and grayish skin, as well as his often rapid and incoherent talk suggested that he was under stress.
“We’ll keep a low profile,” Modin continued. “We’ll have to see whether there’ll be a follow-up article. What’s written here doesn’t point in any particular direction. I think we’d do better in Stockholm then out here in the wilderness. We need a serious talk with Bergman; stop the leaks. Special Ops can under no circumstances get hold of Astrid’s whereabouts.”
CHAPTER 44
STOCKHOLM, FRIDAY, MAY 8, 7:30 P.M.
Axman sat down in the only armchair near the window that faced the garden and yard in Modin’s Stockholm apartment. They had just arrived from Grisslehamn.
Across from the armchair was a much used love seat and a brown coffee table. The table lamp was missing. It was broken. Modin had shoved it in a closet in the kitchen. He wasn’t good at such things. Monika used to take c
are of decorating their living quarters.
“Bergman’s on his way,” Modin said and put down his cell phone.
At that same moment, a text message arrived. He ignored it.
“Do you think we’re safe here?” Axman said.
“Safer than in Grisslehamn. And besides, we really need to take care of things. I have an idea but it’s not ready for presentation yet. Give me some more time to think.”
Modin went to the bookcase on the long wall of the small apartment and pulled out an old paperback.
“You remember this one?” he said, showing Axman the cover. “Sjöwall & Wahlöö’s Man on the Balcony. Still a good read. One of the first crime novels I ever read.”
“I liked The Fireman Who Vanished,” Axman said. “The best in the series. Did you know that the two authors were communists?”
“You mean Maj Sjöwall and her partner Per Wahlöö? Sure I did,”
Modin said. “What do you want me to say? Still good stuff. You always feel sorry for ordinary citizens in those books. That’s what makes them work.”
Modin put a CD in the stereo that was lodged between stacks of books in the bookcase. The small but expensive Bowers & Wilkins loudspeakers filled the room with “Carpet Crawlers” by Genesis.
“Remember this?” Modin said. “Genesis, they were commies too back then. There are not many people left that remember the world’s best rock band. Well, everyone knows their drummer, Phil Collins, and their singer Peter Gabriel. But their guitarist Steve Hackett and the keyboardist Tony Banks are not half as well known.”
“Don’t forget their bass player, Mike Rutherford,” Axman said. “Mike and the Mechanics. That was his band later on. “The Living Years,” you remember? What a team. They ought to have a museum devoted to them. Culture from the 1970s.” Axman shut his eyes and enjoyed the music. “This apartment has seen plenty of warm-ups. You remember when we used to go to the Cave Dart Club?”
“Or the Ritz Rock Club on Medborgarplatsen Square?” Modin said. As he plopped down on the divan in the corner of the room next to a large writing desk, he peeked at his cell phone. The text was still there, like a sleeping rattlesnake. He had no intention of letting it out of its cage.
This was Modin’s first apartment, and he had kept it all these years. It was about 360 square feet; the idea had been for his son to take it over one day. That wouldn’t happen.
The apartment was on the second floor of a building on the busy Götgatan Road in Söder, near Medborgarplatsen Square, with a French balcony facing the yard. When he moved in at age 18, a Swedish rock legend, the singer from the band Hep Stars, lived in the same building. Their breakthrough was the hit “Cadillac.” How very proud he had been to live in the same apartment building as a celebrity.
“Sometimes you wish you were 18 all over again, Axman. Don’t you feel like that? Everything was so incredibly simple. At least in hindsight. You just went downtown without any planning. Not like now when everything has to be planned in minute detail and coordinated with your job, gym sessions, and family. And nowadays everything you do has to be facebooked and twittered. The joy of life becomes diluted somehow. It was better in the old days, I’m telling you.”
“You were living here when Palme was murdered?”
“Yes, I was. Don’t remind me, please. I have a vague memory of watching it on TV as I woke up the day after, but nothing more than that. I can’t remember what I was doing the night he was killed. I suppose I was working,” Modin said as he smiled in Axman’s direction.
“You were, like, saving the nation. Sure you don’t remember?”
“Yeah, seriously. I really don’t remember what I was doing that night. Everybody else seems to, but I don’t. It’s strange.”
“I was at a party at the Royal Technical University,” Axman said. “Right in the middle of my studies there. We were told about the assassination at the party, but not many people reacted. We were all too drunk. Only when we went home and sobered up did the penny drop. This was the Prime Minister. Even though most people studying at the Technical University didn’t sympathize with Palme and his policies, he was still a human being, and our Prime Minister no less. He was assumed to work for the best for his country and had the right to live. It’s a disgrace the way he had to go, Modin. A real fucking disgrace.”
“I quite agree. Things were really screwed up back then. King Gustav III was murdered in a similar way back in the eighteenth century. Back then people may have thought it was okay to stop an autocrat in his tracks, but the 1980s happened to be democratic times. There are other ways of sidelining a prime minister who is well past his expiration date. We do have such things as general elections; the people have the power to change things. Or, at least, ought to have.”
“Sure you don’t remember?” Axman said again.
“I promise.” Modin raised his right hand. “Trust me.”
“Modin, I’ve been thinking about what you said about Special Ops and those who wanted us killed. These guys, whoever they were, must be subordinate to those who killed Olof Palme, don’t you think? This would mean that Chris Loklinth and his psychos at Special Ops are aware of that. He’s not stupid. But we know all too well that Special Ops are not going to stop them. So, they will be back.”
“What would you say if I told you that Special Ops was planning it all?”
“Are you serious?”
“Of course. Keeping information about the Olof Palme murder under wraps must be one of the things at the top of their agenda. They themselves are involved. They were then in 1986, and they still are today.”
“And you said you know nothing, Modin?”
“I said I don’t remember what I did that day, but I think Special Ops may have been involved. That is pure analysis, a personal hypothesis, nothing else.”
“Loklinth will act ruthlessly if he thinks we’re onto something. We know that from experience. Somebody has tried to kill you twice now, Modin. It has to stop. Who knows what happens the third time…”
Modin’s cell phone rang. He answered after three rings. The number was hidden.
“Anton, this is Chris. How are things? Did you get my text?” Chris Loklinth, the head of Military Intelligence Special Operations was on the other end of the line. Modin slid to his feet and walked over to the window, where he stood behind the curtain and looked out into the yard five floors down. The evening sun was shining in his eyes and he was sweating. Was Loklinth in the vicinity? Did he have the window under surveillance?
“What do you want? I’m busy.”
“I think we should meet. Are you available right now? I can see that you’re in town. At home on Götgatan?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I’ll be over in ten minutes.”
“No, I’m afraid that’s not possible,” Modin said. “We can meet at Beckholmen in half an hour, at the Gustav V dock.”
“Okay. In thirty minutes then.”
Modin put his cell phone down onto the coffee table. He already regretted mentioning the location of the first attempt on his life. Was he crazy to go back there? He wiped the palms of his hands on his pants and remained standing. He felt nauseous. It was as if the wind had brought old, infected air from his former life as a servant in the interests of the state. He had lived under the happy misconception that it was over. Now Loklinth’s call had broken the spell.
The idiot he was, Modin had just put himself back into the dark corridors of his recurring nightmares.
“Who was it?”
“Loklinth.”
“Speak of the devil! What did he want?”
“Talk. It sounded important.”
CHAPTER 45
STOCKHOLM, BECKHOLMEN, FRIDAY, MAY 8
Chris Loklinth was waiting on the edge of the Gustav V dock on the western side of Beckholmen. He appeared as a clear silhouette in the deserted area. He had his hands in his pockets and was looking out toward the gravel track leading to the docks. He kicked a small rock, but it did not roll
far. He let it be.
When he saw Modin’s Volvo turn into the area in front of two large cranes and the Gröna Lund amusement part, Loklinth thought that this could well be the scene from a 1950s movie. Modin probably still felt the cold in his marrow from the previous time he was here. How could he have chosen this meeting place? Wasn’t he afraid of his demons?
Barely any daylight was left. The sun had set over the churches of Stockholm and they now blended in with the rest of the asphalt jungle. The city hung above the sea like one huge carpet of sound. Amidst whiffs of oil and tar, the air was ominously cool. The sea smelled salty. A tourist boat on its way out to the hunched isles glided past. A seagull was sitting on a stone pillar on the lookout for dinner. It lifted its beak and screeched.
“Modin, we have to work together on this,” Chris Loklinth said as Modin approached. He completely ignored the fact that they had last met under rather different circumstances. He held his crippled finger curled up against his palm. “We essentially want the same thing.”
“Say what you’re going to say,” Modin said.
Loklinth noticed that Modin was very uncomfortable. He had mustered enough courage to come here, but he could tell it was a façade. He wanted to put on a tough act and seem unaffected, but it wasn’t working. Modin was scared shitless. He’s afraid of me, Loklinth thought, smiling to himself.
Loklinth had been Modin’s boss at Special Ops in the 1980s. In those days, Modin was young, inquisitive, and open to new experiences. Loklinth had molded him into the agent he needed in the organization: a secret operative whose task it was to protect the interests of the state. This included a change of personality; he had made Modin more hardboiled and less sensitive. Yes, I educated and trained him, but I did what I did for the sake of the nation. I had to.
Enemy of the State (Anton Modin Book 2) Page 20