Deep State (Anton Modin Book 1)

by Anders Jallai

  Albert Svan was reflecting on his own childhood. His father had beaten him whenever he thought he deserved it. Children could be extremely unruly and stubborn at times. He pondered his relationship with his father for a moment, while taking a big gulp straight out of the bottle his wife had just brought him. Most of it missed his mouth, ran down his chin and onto his white collar.

  “Fuck woman, did you shake this bottle, or what?”

  • • •

  Bill Bergman was leaning against the railings, holding on with his left hand as he was harshly pushed forward by one of the gorillas down into the dark basement. At the bottom of the staircase, he was pushed through a heavy steel door. He heard the door slam hard behind him.

  There was an eerie silence in the small, confined space. He listened intensely. He noticed that they didn’t lock the door behind him. He removed the blindfold and the hearing protectors. The room was dark, and his eyes had a hard time getting used to the sparse light. After a while, he was able to make out rough contours, and he slowly started to fumble his way around.

  The room was dominated by an indefinable stench, like old garbage, and it originated from a pile on the floor, an animal. A dead cat with no head! The lump was resting in a dark puddle and he just assumed it was blood.

  What a bunch of sick bastards!

  He heard a noise from the sewers, someone was flushing a toilet somewhere in the house. He tried to brace himself for what else he would find down here. He cleared his head as best as he could and tiptoed around the dead cat.

  And there she was, Astrid. She was tied up, hanging from two pieces of rope. She was stained in blood and seemingly lifeless. He put his index finger on the side of her throat. Her pulse was weak, but steady. With shaking hands he untied her, taking her in his arms, embracing her.

  With tears streaming down his cheeks, he carefully examined her body. Astrid’s wrists had ugly red marks from the ropes, which in some places had even punctured the skin. Other than that, her body showed no sign of visible injuries. The blood all over her body seemed to be from the cat carcass on the floor. He took off his jersey and wrapped it around her.

  “Open the door, for fuck’s sake!” he yelled at the top of his lungs.

  The lever on the heavy steel door slowly turned, and it opened a crack.

  “Put the girl down on the floor and put the blindfold and the hearing protectors back on,” a deep male voice said in broken Swedish.

  “Never! I will never let her go,” Bergman yelled.

  “Let go of the girl if you want to make it out of here alive,” said the man with the deep voice and without the slightest trace of emotions.

  Bergman reluctantly put Astrid down on the cold dusty concrete. He put the hearing protectors and the blindfold back on and then waited.

  It felt like an eternity, but he did not dare to move or say anything. He was weak in his knees and his mouth was dry like sandpaper. Finally, a firm hand grabbed his left upper arm and guided him toward the staircase. He stumbled a couple of times. Being this close, he could smell his capturer’s body odor. It was a mix of old cigarette smoke and the offensive sour smell of sweat. He instinctively got the feeling this man was big, but not in particularly good shape, since he struggled to make it up the stairs.

  Bergman was led out into the yard where he once again felt the gravel crunch underneath his shoes.

  “Don’t leave my daughter down there!”

  “Don’t worry.”

  The fresh air was a relief. Someone pushed his head down and shoved him into the backseat of a car. He caught the characteristic scent of new plastic and leather, noticing how his sense of smell had sharpened. It was most likely the same car that had brought him here.

  He let his hand wander over the leather-clad backseat. His daughter was right next to him, and he put his arm firmly around her shoulders. She was still unconscious. Like a rag doll, she was leaning against his side.

  Once again, it was a fast, bumpy, and violent car ride, and at times, he had to grab hold of the seat in front of him. The metal bars of the headrest provided good handlebars, especially through the sharp turns. He guessed that there were two men in the front seat. He could hear them exchange words every now and then, but he had no way of making out what they were saying. After what Bergman estimated to be ten minutes, the car stopped and the backdoor opened. He was forced to let go of Astrid as someone yanked him out of the car. With his feet planted on terra firma, he experienced a cool breeze from an undefined place.

  “Astrid! Oh my God, where is my daughter?” he screamed as the car sped off, tires screeching. He tore off the contraptions from his head, and it only took him a few seconds to realize where he was. He had been dropped off in the huge parking lot outside the Munich brewery on South Mälarstrand. His daughter was lying on the asphalt, right at his feet.

  He bent down and took her in his arms. She had started to come around and hopefully, with some luck, she would not remember too much of the horrific events she had endured. He took off his coat, wrapped it around her, and started to walk home.

  It was a quarter to one in the morning and not a single soul was on the streets. In the distance, he could hear the faint sound from cars passing by on the South Mälarstrand link.

  • • •

  Honorable Judge Albert Svan was comfortably seated in his recliner with his feet up on the leather ottoman in front of him. The “Pilgrim Chorus” from Wagner’s Tannhäuser streamed from the speakers of his expensive sound system. Occasionally, he waved his hand in the air as if he was conducting the symphony orchestra. He was humming along and reached out for his snifter containing a sizeable shot of Calvados. As he was sipping the exclusive liquor, letting it wash up against his pallet, he thought back on his successful career. It was part of a ritual he enjoyed each time he had accomplished a mission for his constituent, the Russian embassy in Stockholm.

  His father had worked for none other than Andrej Vysjinskij, Stalin’s chief prosecutor. Unfortunately, his father had passed away from a massive heart attack when Albert was only nine years old, and after a while, his mother remarried. His stepfather was a high-ranking KGB officer. After fulfilling his compulsory military service within the Soviet Military Intelligence service GRU, Svan had been handpicked for the specialized cadre of GRU agents serving abroad—at the tender age of 24. The KGB gave him a false identity. In many painstaking hours, his personal history had been thoroughly developed, refined, and rehearsed before he was sent to Sweden in 1984.

  While in Sweden, he made contact with the intelligence community and offered his services. They accepted him as a Soviet defector and gave him yet another new identity—Swedish this time. After months of deprogramming and debriefing at Special Ops, he was employed with the emergency response unit at the Norrmalm city police department. The debriefing had been relatively smooth, since his Swedish was close to flawless, thanks to his time with the GRU.

  Being part of the emergency response unit, he had, along with a fellow deputy officer, contributed to swerving the entire unit to the far right just to confuse and hide his real intentions. True to their motto ‘the end always justifies the means,’ the group never shied away from anything, however dirty, brutal or immoral, to uphold law and order, even if it meant cracking a few skulls in the process. They enjoyed a lot of admiration from police leadership, and Albert had personally used a gun club on the Island of Djurgården as a recruiting ground. The idea was to work freelance assignments for Special Ops, but also to work directly for the Soviet embassy in Stockholm.

  Of course, none of his colleagues in the emergency response unit knew anything about his ulterior motives—infiltrating the Swedish Police Force.

  After a few high profile scandals within the unit, among them an unusually brutal assault that was heavily exploited in the media, he was burnt out. So, he was encouraged to take undergraduate law classes. Turned out he had a hard time grasping and memorizing judicial terms and laws. Fortunately, his mentor, an old
law professor, gave him a lot of leeway. He realized that the importance of what Albert Svan was about to accomplish, first as a lawyer and later on as a judge, would widely outweigh a few missed judicial terms or flunked exams.

  Albert Swan was officially of Baltic descent, a fact he made sure everyone at Special Ops knew. This was, in his own view, an absolutely brilliant move, since Baltic people in Sweden had a reputation of harboring downright fascist views, which gave him the perfect cover for his assignments. His fascist reputation had, over time, been methodically fueled and cemented by the KGB.

  Albert Svan had another sip of the Calvados while he once again admitted to himself how impressed he was with the KGB’s methods and modus operandi. Weak elements were relentlessly weeded out. Only the cream of the crop was kept on and groomed. It had been that way ever since 1917, when the KGB, back then called Cheka, was formally founded. To this day, the organization’s members all over the world celebrated the anniversary of this event on December 20 every year. Back in the 1980s, only fifty Soviet illegals lived in Sweden, but by now their offspring, carefully groomed by their parents to follow their footsteps, had prestigious careers on different levels in the establishment. Sweden was infiltrated from top to bottom. If the Swedes only knew, Albert Svan thought

  He enjoyed the moment as Wagner’s “Pilgrim Choir” rose to a crescendo. It was almost like a sexual encounter; peaceful warmth was spreading throughout his body, he closed his eyes, tilted his head backwards, and fell asleep in an almost meditative state.

  His wife Anita snuck over to the recliner and rescued the snifter before it shattered against the floor. Then she turned off the lights and tiptoed out of the room.

  CHAPTER 41

  SPECIAL OPS HEADQUARTERS, STOCKHOLM, WEDNESDAY, JULY 16

  Chris Loklinth was sitting in his office reading the morning papers with a great deal of satisfaction. He had a sizeable pile of newspapers in front of him and he had spent the first part of the morning quickly browsing through the stack. Anton Modin was front-page news in a few of them. Among those was the Norrtelje News, which also had a picture of Inspector Aronson and a quote from the press conference:

  We are looking forward to the upcoming trial with great optimism. Without getting ahead of myself or revealing too much of the investigation, we can say with considerable certainty that Anton Modin is looking at a significant prison sentence. It is not often that evidence and testimonies are as strong as in this case

  Following the quote was a section about Officer Aronson, the police officer who had carried out the arrest. Everything about his background, career, and even spare time interests was discussed. He had a green belt in jiu-jitsu from Chiang Kai Shek Martial Arts Club in Norrtelje and he hoped to eventually advance to a black belt. Also, according to the article, Wilhelm Aronson was a vivid sports-fisherman and his specialty was walleye.

  Further down on the same page was a quote from Chief Prosecutor Evald Rose:

  Anton Modin committed this heinous crime in the wrong place and at the wrong time. He has been arrested for rape and aggravated assault. We are looking forward to the trial and his conviction in a few weeks. Anything else would be unacceptable. Everyone in the prosecutor’s office will do everything possible to uphold law and order in this country, even if a celebrity is involved.

  It had been a long time since Chris Loklinth had taken so much pleasure and joy from reading the morning papers. He sipped his coffee while browsing through the papers a second time to make sure he had not missed anything regarding Anton Modin’s arrest before taking a stroll down the corridor to Bob Lundin’s office.

  “It seems like we finally got him. He’ll agree to anything to avoid jail time. Please contact him, Lundin, and present him with our conditions and demands. There is no hurry, a few days in a cell will only do him good and soften his attitude. But after that, we will let him out. Tell the Estonians the game is over, pay them, and send them home.”

  “I’ve been looking forward to this,” Captain Lundin said with a smirk all over his boyish face.

  “See to it that he catches some sort of stomach bug. Wouldn’t be too surprising in this heat wave. Talk to Aronson in Norrtelje. He will take care of it.”

  “Okay, will do,” Bob Lundin said, “I just received a message on the secret cryptograph. Mr. Svan has managed to recruit Bergman. According to this message, Bergman will do whatever we ask of him.”

  “What a darned good day this is shaping up to be, Lundin. Albert Svan is a professional through and through; he can be trusted, for sure. I have a good feeling about this. Soon, we’ll all be able to go on vacation. How about we take a car trip to Kaliningrad to check out old war memorials, Captain?”

  Chris Loklinth got shivers of pleasure as he imagined the journey. He had been looking forward to a trip like that for ages. He missed Russian vodka terribly.

  “I would like for you to take responsibility for the surveillance of Modin for the next three weeks, just to be on the safe side,” he continued. “Assign a couple of resources to wait outside prison when he is released. Provided that he will cooperate. I don’t trust him, although this time I feel more confident than I have in a long time. He is finished, done for. Let this serve as an example to any other case officer who might be thinking of walking out.”

  Chris Loklinth exited Lundin’s office. During the recent heat wave, he had experienced an irritating rash on his scalp, which had resulted in a series of small scabs, but it had become much better in the last couple of days. He wished the same for Modin, except he didn’t want Modin’s to improve.

  Once Loklinth was back at his desk, he turned on the computer. Starting the browser, he logged into younggirls.com and clicked the link teensex.

  CHAPTER 42

  GRISSLEHAMN, SUNDAY, JULY 20

  Yet another bottle of Chablis 2001 landed on the table. Modin, at The Rock by himself, was slowly and methodically getting drunk.

  The waitress carefully put a menu right next to the bottle.

  “Thanks Ellie, but no thanks. No food when I’m drinking.”

  He lightly slapped her on her bottom, jokingly. Apparently, she did not appreciate it. Instead, she ignored him and attended to the neighboring tables. Her troubled facial expression didn’t escape him, though, and neither did the other guests’ gossipy whispers about him.

  He didn’t give a damn about the other patrons! These hypocritical asses eating healthy lunches and washing it down with mineral water. So he had a liquid lunch… big fucking deal!

  It was Ellie’s expression that worried him; it was an expression of disappointment. A one-night-stand with her briefly crossed his mind. His mouth formed into some sort of evil smirk, and it was probably not a pretty sight. She was incredibly beautiful. Around five-foot-six, she had curly, dark brown hair and a curvy body. An ‘A’ specimen through and through, that was for sure. Her face was pretty, with deep green-blue eyes, and, best of all, she liked him a lot, too. Or at least she used to.

  Once the summer season was over, Ellie would return to the U.S. and attend her last year at Yale Law School. She had told him that her goal was to become a business lawyer. Never mind that, though. He didn’t care for her brains. He wanted her, badly, as he secretly admired her well-rounded ass from a distance.

  He winked the next time she whisked past his table in her short red-and-white-checkered skirt, which beautifully exposed her well-formed legs. But sadly, there was no response to his flirtation. A barely noticeable wrinkle in her forehead revealed that she was somewhat confused and even concerned by his drooling. What might have turned into something had long sailed away over the horizon. He knew that.

  When Modin was halfway through his bottle of wine, Ellie brought him a plate of food, which he had not ordered. Grilled walleye with garlic fried mushrooms, carrots fried in butter, and home fries. So there was still hope.

  I’d be dead if I was not attracted to this woman, he thought and raised his misty glass toward her.

  Ellie’s ey
es darkened, and Modin decided to chill and let her go for now. He would not give Loklinth the pleasure of filing a report that branded Ellie as Modin’s American striptease dancer. Ellie was too good of a woman for that.

  He felt like shit. It wasn’t the food, which he devoured with gusto, or the wine. He had picked one on the most expensive wines on the list in pure self-pity and an attempt to comfort himself. His antagonist, Loklinth, had a tendency to kick him back down once he had started to crawl out of the mud. In the 1980s, when he had first started working for him, things had been different. Back then, Loklinth had the extraordinary ability to motivate Modin, to make him go the extra mile, to widen his horizon. He had pushed Modin’s limits and propelled him to new levels of self-confidence and integrity.

  And now, Loklinth had made sure that he was branded a rapist. Fuck man! Loklinth couldn’t have done a better. It was a homerun, a touchdown. The rumor was as troubling as wearing a scarlet letter on your forehead. Obviously, Special Ops had helped him out of prison. After a bad stomach flu, Modin had promised Special Ops to lay low, and miraculously, a few days later he was told the case was closed. A phone call from somebody who was most certainly part of Loklinth’s closest circle of officers had told him “that Sweden doesn’t need any cold war scandals this summer. Is that perfectly clear?”

  It was. Crystal clear. They’d destroy him and his friends if he’d keep diving for the mini sub.

  In a way, Modin was destroyed already. His reputation was, at least; that was obvious. People’s snarled looks made it hard for them to maintain their table manners. Parents pulled their kids’ chairs closer to the table. The children, he noticed, pitied him. He had been such a role model to them, but now their parents wouldn’t condone that any more; they despised him.