Modin had a sip of his coffee.
Anton Modin and Bill Bergman had met as divers in their younger years. Through thick and thin they had both lived through each other’s sometimes tumultuous relationships, wives, ex-girlfriends, one-night stands, what have you. They handled the tragic events ripping apart Modin’s family with grace and their friendship intact. Admittedly, there had been many late nights at various bars, but they had grown tight. Almost like a couple. Or at least that’s what Ewa Bergman, Bill’s ex-wife, had said.
Now, Bergman was single. He lived in a penthouse in the southern district of Stockholm. Every other weekend he had custody of his seven-year-old daughter with Ewa, Astrid.
“With your six-foot-two athletic constitution, natural good looks, and incurable reputation as a womanizer, you shouldn’t allow yourself to stoop to this, to reduce yourself to a worthless bum. I mean, look at you. You’re shaking, your eyes are bloodshot, and your stinking breath could very well revive the dead. Come on, let’s take a trip down to the deli. I’ll drive.”
Bill Bergman grabbed the keys to Modin’s Chevy truck and put on his black leather jacket.
“Okay,” Modin said. “Maybe a cream cheese bagel or a meatball grinder, lots of coffee, and maybe even something refreshing.”
They both laughed.
CHAPTER 3
Anton Modin’s old beat-up pickup truck had a big block 454 under the hood, a potent V8 of almost 400 horsepower, which was humming along nicely as they drove down the old gravel road toward the small village and its harbor.
It was around nine-thirty and already about 65 degrees; this was going to be a hot one. It was the Saturday before Midsummer’s Eve, celebrated the June Friday nearest the summer solstice, and usually the kick-off for the long summer break. A lot of people were out and about in the small fishing village, ready to enjoy a perfect summer day.
Bergman rubbed his eyes and looked at himself in the rearview mirror. He was short in stature, only five-foot-six. To compensate for that, he had a comparatively small head, which made the rest of him look bigger and sturdier. His friends always said that judging from pictures, he wasn’t a bad looking guy; and pictures were all there would be left when you’re gone.
At least that’s what he told Modin when they first met while working together on a diving project. Both were seasoned divers. Bergman loved everything about diving, especially the weightlessness, the fuzzy silhouettes of underwater formations, and the camaraderie.
“You have certainly picked a prime spot, that’s for sure,” he said enviously.
They parked the car outside the small bakery, an old converted fishing cottage painted in traditional Falu-red with white corners, typical for older Swedish wooden houses in the countryside, a place as well frequented in the daytime as the village pub and restaurant, The Rock, was at night.
The Bakery in Grisslehamn, Sweden
Bergman could smell the familiar scent of tong, fish, and sea from the fishing harbor a few hundred yards further down. But as they entered the bakery, the stench was quickly overcome by the wonderful smell of freshly baked bread and cold cuts. They each loaded up a tray of goodies.
Modin was in a slightly better mood and chose a table on the open patio. It was the table right by the sea and in the glaring sun, smack dab in the crowd of early risers. He was off to a good start.
They sat down while Bergman appreciatively pointed out that they had had a good life.
“Haven’t you gotten over that yet?” Bergman, who was chewing on a liver pate sandwich, fired off the question in the same leisurely manner as if he had been asking the time of day.
“Well, I am just starting to learn how to live without my family. I can’t get over the way it all happened. Deep down I am still boiling with rage, and it’s eating me from the inside out. I don’t know how to describe it, to be honest.”
“You still hung up on the suspicion that something was wrong with that ferry?”
“Yes, I am.”
Bergman noticed Modin staring down into his orange juice almost as if he was ashamed of his answer.
“Hello there, guys!”
Both turned around to see Harry Nuder walk up, Modin’s old friend who worked at the Svartklubben pilot station. He had his two faithful companions on a leash, his hunting dogs, and the three of them seemed to just have completed their morning exercise routine. Nuder’s usually expressionless round face was red from exhaustion. The dogs were worked up and energetic.
“Mind if I join you guys?”
“Sure thing man, just walk around the fence and, in the meantime, I will make sure to get you a cup.” Bergman turned to look for the waitress.
Modin’s head was drooping as he was staring down on the table. Although he was wearing his Ray-Ban shades, one could make out a pale and somewhat concerned expression on his face. He started to play with the dogs.
Harry Nuder folded his tall, lanky body into a chair and nudged Modin.
“Hey Modin, long time no see,” he said. “How’re things, how’ve you been, man? For a while there I thought you had sold the house and moved away.”
“Just been keeping busy. Lots of things to take care of, that’s all.”
“Yeah, we all go through that from time to time,” Nuder said in his usual gentle and agreeable manner.
Bergman noticed how Modin paid close attention to Nuder’s old golden retriever Albert. He was feeding him pieces of a salami sandwich under the table. Modin and Albert were old acquaintances. The dog had often played with Modin’s son, Alexander. The other dog, a beagle named Elvis, was lying on the gravel, curiously following the activity on the open plaza just beyond the patio. Gradually the beagle lost interest, putting his nose down on the ground. The dog had a certain resemblance to his master.
How did Nuder turn his dogs into such even-keeled and faithful creatures, Bergman wondered as he petted Elvis under the table.
Harry Nuder owned his own hunting and fishing grounds in and around Grisslehamn and the two dogs were his best friends—his family. Nuder’s father had passed away two years prior and he had a rocky relationship and very sparse contact with his mother. She was living in a small house a few miles from the village. When Nuder had to perform his duties as a pilot, he always let the two dogs come along onboard.
“Great,” Bergman said. “Have some sandwiches, why don’t you? This one is delicious.”
He pointed to the liver pate on white bread.
“Modin has gone through some rough patches during the years,” Bergman said smiling. “We are still working on it. He should really go into detox.”
“What a beautiful day, isn’t it?” Harry Nuder said.
“Yes, indeed.” Bergman answered. “Just the right time to get some projects out of the way before the foul fall weather is upon us.”
“Excellent idea! Hey, Modin, old fart,” Nuder said, trying to gauge some kind of reaction behind the dark sunglasses. “Why don’t you two kick off another exciting diving project or something? Between the two of you, you have located missing airplanes and Russian submarine wrecks. I am sure there’s more treasures out there just waiting to be discovered.”
Nuder took a big bite out of his sandwich.
“Sheesh, all that feels like ancient history now,” Modin said in a low voice.
“But I assume you have all of your diving gear intact, right?”
“Yeah, it’s lying around somewhere, rusting away,” Modin said and took a sip of his iced orange juice. “Diving is something I have left behind for good.”
“Heck, Nuder is right, Modin. We should start diving again, scoop out some exciting ancient wreck somewhere. It will do you good. A real anti-depressant.”
“Forget about it. I prefer to be like this. I like being depressed. It’s my choice.”
Bergman noticed how Nuder was looking at Modin, from head to toe, as if he was examining him. Then his eyes started to drift further away, into the distance. He suddenly had a remarkably tired expressio
n on his face. Bergman stopped chewing. There was something in the air, something unsaid. Obviously, Nuder had something to share with them. And indeed, Nuder broke out in a big smile as he took another big bite out of his liver pate sandwich.
“What do you guys think about diving for a wrecked Soviet mini sub in the waters outside the pilot station Svartklubben?” Nuder was jovial, as if he might just as well be discussing a newly formed reef out in the bay at Modin’s house.
Nuder couldn’t contain himself when Modin reacted exactly the way he had hoped for deep down.
“You have got to be kidding, right?” Modin said.
“Yeah, you would like to believe I am kidding, wouldn’t you? But it’s true. There’s a sub out there and you know it. But it’s a matter of national security.”
“Oh come on, knock it off, what do you mean by national security?” Bill Bergman said.
“I can’t say any more. I’m afraid I have already said too much,” Nuder said with mischief in his eyes. Then he turned around and frowned, watching a car passing by slowly. Bergman noticed.
“It is quite obvious that you are either just fucking with us or you know a great deal more than you are telling us,” Bergman said.
“Yeah, that might be true.”
“Which one?” Bergman put his coffee cup down, his interest now peaked.
“Mini sub?” Modin interrupted, pulling his Ray-Bans down to the tip of his nose and looking straight at Nuder with his bloodshot but now alert eyes.
“If you guys are seriously interested in the dive, I think I can help you.”
Harry Nuder looked over his shoulder, lowered his voice, and hinted that he had information from a reliable source.
“These are different times, and the incident with the sinking of an enemy sub might be regarded in a new light.”
“How do you mean viewed ‘in a new light,’ like in a different context?” Bergman said, also lowering his voice to almost a whisper.
“What I mean is this: the statute of limitations on my oath of confidentiality has run out. I have been given the green light to tell the story, tell it the way it actually happened.”
Bergman noticed that Harry Nuder was still watching that car as it slowly disappeared in the distance.
“Okay, we are all ears,” Modin suddenly said, clearly perking up with this new turn in the conversation. This was Harry Nuder, the pilot boat skipper from Grisslehamn, and not some storyteller full of bull crap. A heavily built, but somewhat stubborn and windswept native of the coastal landscape, he was towering six-foot-three above sea level and weighed in at slightly over 240 pounds. His enormous hands were marked by 44 years of hard labor. To crown it all, his blond thatch looked like wild brush, but otherwise clean and crisp. Nuder told the story straight, with no digressions or extravagances.
Back in the 1980s, he had been slapped with an oath of confidentiality from one of the officers who’d actually been at the center of the events.
“I witnessed the whole thing in the line of duty,” he said. “It really happened!”
He briefly recounted the events of that fateful night in 1982, when the Swedish Navy downed a Russian sub, an incident that had been hushed up faster and buried deeper than any other Cold War event ever before. He had recently been contacted by one of the commanders who’d been involved, Hans von Arbin. Von Arbin had since made a political career as a conservative politician in Stockholm. Allegedly, he needed a way to smoothly bring this event and the mini sub onto the political agenda.
“I mentioned your name, Modin,” Nuder said. “That’s when von Arbin gave the green light to tell it all. Times are different.”
“Are you serious?” Bergman said in a loud voice. “Is this really true?”
“Hey, no need to wake the dead with your voice,” Modin said.
Times are different. Those trivial words harbored the tension that had gotten to Bergman as soon as Nuder sat down at the table.
Nuder’s eyes penetrated Modin’s black Ray-Ban lenses. He was not going to leave until he had delivered his proposal.
“We can’t talk about this here and now,” Bergman said. “Nuder, why don’t you come over for dinner tomorrow night? We can talk more then, in absolute privacy.”
“Yeah, and please leave your dogs at home, I have Miss Mona out here,” Modin said.
Harry Nuder’s face shifted expression; one could see in his eyes that he was pleased. He got up, leashed his two dogs, and took a shortcut past the fence and out onto the open plaza. He did not turn around.
CHAPTER 4
Modin and Bergman stayed behind at the coffee shop for a while, enjoying the early summer heat and the sunshine. Every now and then, they exchanged glances while baking in the sun. Were they back in the game again?
Occasionally, Modin exhaled into the palm of his hand, as if someone would soon subject him to a Breathalyzer test. Bergman gave his thumbs up, smiling, when he noticed. Some moms and their kids had stopped by the coffee shop, apparently all done with today’s tennis lessons, debating whether to buy a baguette or bagels for the afternoon coffee.
Bergman and Modin were both about to leave as they heard a familiar voice behind them. It was Matti Svensson, a washed up journalist now living in Grisslehamn pretending to be writing his memoirs. Back in the day, when he was writing for the Stockholm Daily News, his hallmark had been an uncanny ability to sniff out news, wherever and whenever, seemingly before the news had even happened.
“Dasvidania, my dear old friends,” Svensson said, with a crooked smile.
“Greetings, Comrade,” Bill Bergman answered.
“What are you two old farts cooking up?”
Svensson wasn’t known to be the jovial type and he was rarely sober, but he seemed to be in a splendid mood that day. Bergman assumed that he had suppressed the depressing fact that he had been forced into early retirement at age 57, due to his alleged radical left-wing politics.
“You are far too left on the political scale,” his female boss, twenty years his junior, had told him. “Time has passed you by, Svensson. I am sorry, but I have a newspaper to run.”
Modin had mixed feelings about Svensson, precisely because he was a straightforward radical. Svensson’s arguments had a lot of substance and seemed based on research rather than just emotions and clichés. Modin appreciated that. They were on opposite sides of the political spectrum, but they often managed to find common ground nonetheless. They were both avidly opposed to corruption in any form or shape, especially when the corruption was a result of an abuse or misdirection of power. Both advocated change, but in different ways and with different means.
“So, what’s up, honorable Mister Editor?” said Modin with a smug smile aimed at Svensson.
“Well, the rumor mill is churning. I hear things might be afoot. Please be a sport and tell an old friend about this new exciting project of yours. I noticed you were talking to Harry Nuder earlier.”
“What effin’ rumors?” Bergman flinched. Granted, Grisslehamn was a very small community, but how could the entire village already know what they had been discussing only moments ago?
“Where did you pick that up, at the national broadcast center?” Bergman was clearly upset.
The national broadcast center was homegrown slang, commonly understood by all, referring to the Russian Embassy in Stockholm. The nickname came from the fact that the building had bugging devices in every single room. Both Svensson and Modin had been there on several occasions, but in completely different contexts.
Bergman and Modin had had been on the Russian ambassador’s guest list for years, ever since they had located a missing Russian submarine from World War II, not far from where they were sitting, and for which they both had been awarded a Russian Medal of Honor.
The nature of Svensson’s association with the embassy was more obscure, but the fact that he enjoyed very good relations with the ambassador’s office was abundantly clear. In all of Svensson’s articles, the Russians were the good guys.
“A little bird told me that Nuder might have had something very interesting to talk about, something buried in the depths of the ocean not far from here,” Matti Svensson said, clearly expecting a reaction.
“I’m afraid your bird is full of shit,” Modin snapped and looked away, watching the moms who were now leaving the deli with loaded shopping bags.
When Matti Svensson turned into an investigative reporter, Bergman had a hard time coping with him. Svensson’s eyes narrowed and the baggy face seemed to stretch over his cheek bones and jaw. He simply got too close and he could easily get under the skin of any interviewee. No wonder that in the course of his work as an active newshound, Matti Svensson had been convicted of harassment on several occasions.
“Okay, I guess I am simply misinformed. But rest assured, I will keep this harbor under close surveillance for the rest of the summer.”
Just as Svensson uttered the words, a fishing trawler docked in the harbor, hundreds of seagulls swarming around it. Luckily, the noise took the edge off Svensson’s statement; in the cacophony that followed, none of them could do anything but smile.
“Yes, sorry to disappoint you Svensson, but we’re both retired,” Bergman said. “We’re just boozing away nowadays, just like you.”
Svensson’s temper flared. His constant mood swings were a known issue and he couldn’t be trusted to keep a secret, which made him, overall, a rather unpredictable person.
Svensson turned around on the spot and headed straight for his yellow bicycle without as much as saying goodbye. He pedaled away, out toward his house near the rocks of Skatudden. They watched the back of his head as he vanished into the crowd of summer tourists.
“I can’t understand how you could let him get so close, so personal with you,” Bergman said after a while.
“Ah, it’s all fun and games. We know exactly where we have each other. It’s like the Cold War, you know, a zero-sum game. I actually enjoy playing along.”
Deep State (Anton Modin Book 1) Page 3