by Jon Stenhugg
“I only drink tea,” said Lemko, “green tea. It’s better for my health. You should drink it instead of coffee. You’ll live longer.”
“Yeah. Yes, you’re right. I’ll get us both some green tea,” and Ekman motioned to the officer behind the two-way mirror.
“Now let’s get back to work,” said Ekman after the tea had arrived. “Where were we?”
“Call me Lemko, that’ll have to do.”
“OK, your name isn’t important. What I need to know is your connection to a murder case west of Stockholm. A man called Leo Hoffberg.”
“Oh, I did that. I already confessed to your other officer, the woman who got me at the ferry terminal. Nice-looking lady. Too bad she’s so adept at judo holds.”
“Really? What I need to know now is why.”
“No reason. It was just that time of day. It made me feel good. It doesn’t matter.”
“No,” said Ekman, “doesn’t matter to me either. I’m only interested in knowing what you were doing in the Stockholm area.”
Lemko hesitated a minute, changing his mind about the answer in the middle of the sentence. “I…I was…I was just there. No reason. Being a tourist. You know. Saw the house, got the urge. He answered the door and I shot him. End of story. You can lock me up.”
“No,” said Ekman, “I can’t.”
This wasn’t the answer Lemko had expected, and for the first time since he’d been apprehended he felt a real shaft of fear tear through his mind. “Can’t? Can’t what?”
“I can’t lock you up.”
“What? Are you just going to let me go? I just told you I murdered a man. You have to.”
“No. I don’t have to. And I don’t have to let you go either.”
“What do you mean?” For the first time Lemko asked a question which he couldn’t answer himself.
“I think you know what it means. You used to work for Markus Wolf. Use your imagination. What would he have done in my shoes?”
“I don’t know. Ask him yourself, he’s still alive. A consultant, from what I hear.”
“Just use your imagination,” said Ekman.
“You can’t do that. This isn’t East Germany. This is Sweden. You have to play by the rules here.”
“Do I?” Ekman leaned forward and smiled. “Who told you that? I can do whatever I want with you. How could I do anything wrong to a person who doesn’t exist?”
“Suppose that I help you with something? Would that make you more inclined to make me exist? I might be able to tell you a few things you don’t already know. Things about the past.”
“For instance?” Ekman stared.
“Like, there were at least two members of your Parliament who were informers to Stasi.”
“Yes.” Ekman moved his head from side to side. “We know. We know who they were too. Old news. Not interesting enough. Your boss Markus Wolf already told us that.”
“I ran Magdalena,” said Schneller. “I was her handler, you know – she was my informant.”
“So you know who she is?” asked Ekman, showing interest for the first time.
“I never got to know her real name, just where she worked. We always met outside her job. She worked in the Parliament Building – some kind of information specialist who worked in the archives. Nice-looking girl. I recruited her after the Red Army Fraction attack on the West German Embassy.”
“Yes?”
“That’s all. She gave me lots of pertinent information on things like disarmament positions, military data, all kinds of things we needed to know at the time. She was great at what she did, until she got married and stopped working there. After that I never heard from her again.”
“Yes?”
“That’s all,” said Lemko.
“Was she involved in the murder?” asked Ekman.
“No. Like I said, I just did it for the hell of it. It felt good.”
“Then you’re back to where you began,” said Ekman as he put his pen back into his shirt pocket. “Like you said, that’s all. Unless you can tell me something about someone in Estonia. Someone from Tallinn? Or Paldiski?”
“Paldiski?” asked Lemko. “I’ve never been to Paldiski.”
“OK, then begin with Tallinn,” said Ekman. “Your business associate there will do. We know you have one, we know when you were there last, and we know who your two Swedish customers were. So tell me something I don’t know if you want to keep me amused. Believe me, you want to keep me amused.”
Lemko suddenly felt the conflict of two identities, a combined unit of fear in a paradox between two alternatives which both gave the same result. If he told Ekman what he wanted to know, his future would be very much shorter than he’d imagined for himself, and yet, if he said nothing he’d be transported to Estonia and left at the mercy of a client who would wonder why he’d been released so quickly. He felt like he was balancing on a razor, and he didn’t like either option available to him. The simplest exit would be to say nothing, and try to fashion an escape route when the time came.
“I can’t remember anything about Tallinn. Or Paldiski. Maybe I’ve never been there at all.”
“I might be able to arrange that,” said Ekman as he left the interrogation room. “They tell me that some parts of it look like East Germany used to look like. You’d probably feel right at home. If you get time to feel at home.”
*
Sara had left Hurtree in her flat when she went to work, and he cleaned up her kitchen before he left, making sure the door was locked after him. He’d booked a cabin on the MS Romantika, a cruise ship servicing the ports of Stockholm and Tallinn. He had plenty of time before the ship left at 6 pm, and he took a bus to the eastern part of Stockholm to visit the Vasa Museum again.
He’d already seen the royal warship which capsized on its maiden voyage after only three miles in 1628, but the museum was so fascinating he took the chance to see it again. He stared at the ship, amazed so much had been spared the tooth of time in the icy waters of the Baltic. It seemed incredible it had been able to sail at all, designed with an afterdeck sticking up like some kind of wooden sail, overloaded with cannons upsetting the balance so necessary to keep it afloat.
On the way out he found the sign showing the way to a memorial for victims of the MS Sally tragedy, and he walked along the asphalt path until he reached it, a black, circular wall over seven feet high, with over eight hundred names inscribed on it. Hurtree noticed there were flowers placed in front of some of the names, and he went back to the kiosk at the museum, bought some flowers and returned. He searched for a minute and then placed them below the name he’d found, a typical English name, the name Captain Peters had mentioned to him during his visit to Munich: the name of the CID agent who had perished on the night the MS Sally went down. Hurtree stood looking out over the grey water of the bay in front of him. The three flags of the nations which had erected the memorial snapped in the brisk breeze and promised a chilly and choppy voyage. Peters hadn’t told him any details about the night of the sinking, just the name of the soldier who had gone down with the ship. He turned on his cell phone and checked in before leaving the memorial.
“Hello, Charlie, this is your ex officio agent Hurtree reporting in. Just thought I’d call and hassle your ass.”
“What’re you up to?” asked Peters.
“Isn’t that a funny question?” said Hurtree. “I guess you thought I’d never figure out why I was sent up here, or that I might find out about the Rocketfish. I guess you have some explaining to do when we meet up next time. Anyway, I’m standing in front of the memorial to the victims of the MS Sally’s sinking, and I put a couple of flowers near your agent’s name. Hope you don’t mind.”
“Were my flowers still there?” asked Peters.
“No, not in front of his name anyway. They probably clean them up every day. Anyway, I put some flowers there. It’s not every day a CID agent gets his name written in stone.”
“No,” said Peters, “thank God for that
. We kept his name off the passenger list when they made it public, but I wanted his name on the memorial. Have you been able to locate the Rocketfish?”
“Oh hell, yes. I shipped it to you yesterday. Collect with Fed Ex,” said Hurtree.
“That sounds like news good enough to get drunk on,” said Captain Peters. “So what are your plans now?”
“I’ve never been to Estonia, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to take a micro-break on my mini-holiday. Assuming you don’t have anything against that.”
“Would what I thought make any difference?” asked Peters.
“No, none whatsoever.”
“Estonia. Any place in particular?”
“I thought Paldiski would be a good place to visit this time of year,” said Hurtree.
“Well you’re old enough to die of natural causes, but if you survive going to Paldiski you’ll probably live forever. I won’t give you any advice except to be careful. That town is probably the most dangerous place in Europe today. Let’s keep your name off the wall.”
“Yes, Papa.”
“I mean it, John, keep your back to the wall.”
“I always do, it’s the only way I can keep standing up.” Hurtree said goodbye and made his way back to the bus station.
Chapter 18
Hurtree was awed by Stockholm’s public transportation infrastructure, the system of buses, trams, trains and the underground making travel on public transportation from any point in the city to another not only possible, but fast and cheap. He caught sight of the ship’s funnels sticking up over the tops of the trees soon after he exited the long tunnel from Gärdet’s underground station and he joined a train of tourists, lemmings dragging their luggage to the MS Romantika, all chirping in high spirits to the low, drumming sound of suitcase wheels on the asphalt.
Hurtree collected his ticket and meal vouchers from the ticket booth before he went on board. His cabin was on deck two, well below the waterline, and as the ship began its departure from the harbour he also discovered he was far too close to the side-thrusters, the propellers used to move the ship sideways during docking procedures. The noise was calamitous and he wondered if he’d be able to sleep. The cabins on both sides of him were filled with young Swedish students who were taking time off from their university classes, four young women on one side and four young men on the other.
Within minutes Hurtree was involved in a conversation with the young men, who kindly filled him in on the cheapest way to eat on board and the waiting time before the ship’s tax-free shop opened. They also told him he should be careful of the Russian women on board, since many of them were HIV-positive prostitutes. He asked them if they knew anything about the sinking of the MS Sally and their cheerful banter suddenly stopped.
“We’ll be passing right by it,” said one of the students. “I’ll show you where it’s at if you want to look.”
“I’m not sure that I do,” said Hurtree. “I just wondered if you guys knew anything about what happened.”
“No one knows what happened,” another of the students chimed in. “The governments have all agreed to keep everything secret, so we’ll probably never know either. That’s what they do here when something embarrassing for the government has occurred: they make it a state secret.”
“Surely the government wasn’t involved in the sinking?” asked Hurtree.
“Then why did they make it a state secret?” asked one of the young men, and then, “Let’s get to the tax-free shop before everything has been sold. That, at least, is not a secret.”
Hurtree followed the young crowd to the shop, and when they returned to their cabins he helped them toast a few attempts to human understanding before going up to the restaurant for his evening meal. It was an expensive meal for Hurtree, more than double what he usually spent on food, but he’d managed to quell his lunchtime hunger pangs with a hot dog at the stand outside the Vasa Museum, and now he’d be able to eat and drink as much as he wanted at a flat-rate fee of $30. The buffet was the best he’d ever experienced, with huge amounts of high-quality food to choose from.
He started with the Baltic herring appetisers and caviar, moved on to a delicious soup, then began a plate of cold cuts before starting with an entrée of roast beef. He alternated between beer and red wine to quench his thirst and finished with a dessert plate of ice cream and cake, and hot coffee. It was far more than he was used to eating and Hurtree was a little queasy as he walked out of the restaurant.
The youngsters on both sides of his cabin were now in phase two of their party, pairing up for the night ahead. He declined an invitation for free drinks and went to bed.
At 1 am and midway in the journey, the ship docked in the Mariehamn harbour, and the side-thrusters slammed tons of water onto the thin sheets of steel plating separating the cabin wall from the tunnel where the propeller was located. The throbbing commotion woke him up with a fright, sweating and wondering if he could make it up to the waterline before the ship sank.
After several anxious seconds he recognised there was a reason for the budget-priced ticket he’d been offered and tried to go back to sleep to the whine of the propeller and the amorous groaning of the couples in the bunks on both sides of his cabin.
*
Morning came all too early for Hurtree, with a loudspeaker announcing that soon they would be docking at the port of Tallinn and it was time for him to prepare to go ashore. He had no time to lose. He had to find a train station, buy his ticket, travel the thirty miles to Paldiski and get back before the ferry left in less than eight hours. It surprised Hurtree not to find a customs officer demanding to see his passport, and he and the rest of the ship’s passengers passed from the ship to the city without any control whatsoever. He got in the queue for a taxi to the train station and had no trouble finding someone who could speak English.
Hurtree only had to wait a short while before the train left for Paldiski; he paid $2 for his ticket on board. The Russian wide-gauge tracks provided each car with room for five seats per row, including a wide aisle between them. Hurtree sat down in a car that didn’t allow dogs or smoking and began the eighty-minute trip to the end of the line; the train stopping at each of the closely-placed stations before it could achieve even half-speed. His view was obscured by streaked, grimy mud splashed with rain that soaked the chilly air outside, and a thin layer of dust on the inside of the window.
The railroad company used plenty of energy to heat up the cars, making it necessary for Hurtree to remove first his jacket, then his sweater. As the train neared Paldiski his ticket was checked by a controller, and then, close to the fence-posts marking where the mine field had once closed off the entire city from everyone except the Russian military, his ticket was checked again by a separate controller. Old habits were apparently hard to break. The last few stops were just concrete platforms next to the tracks that ran through a forest of birch trees rooted in dark, swampy earth, interrupted by stretches of grass-covered peat moss.
When the train arrived in Paldiski, the few remaining passengers got off and Hurtree watched as they got into several older Russian cars which waited for them.
Rows of grey concrete apartment buildings rose in the distance and Hurtree began to walk towards them, passing desolate, uninhabited buildings with the disembowelled parts of Russian army vehicles parked outside. The street signs were in Estonian and Russian.
Reminds me of Ireland. The national language on top and homage to the old colonial power just underneath.
Most of the buildings were unoccupied; empty shells left to rot after the military had pulled out, taking everything of value with them. The few Russians left behind had been given the opportunity to learn Estonian if they wished to be integrated into the newly founded republic. Many didn’t, becoming stateless individuals with no rights, no passports, no way to gain employment, no way to get health care; just newly defined zombies in the newly defined state that seemed to have no use for them, dangerous because there were so many
of them and doubly dangerous because so many had technical military skills and no army to employ them.
Many of the cars parked in front of the decaying apartment houses were new, including several BMWs and Audis.
Looks like someone is making money off of something, thought Hurtree.
He went into the only grocery store in the town, just to get a feel for the place. As soon as he entered, the few shoppers inside looked at him and the chatter subsided immediately. No one was smiling, so he left without buying anything.
He walked back to the station house, passing a piece of corrugated metal that was used as a gate, and on which someone had painted Welcome to Hell. He continued towards the station house and went into a small café beside the tracks. A sign in front of the bar mirror told him he could order a shot of Russian vodka for less than a buck fifty, and buried behind a wall of bottles of Russian vodka he saw a bottle of Absolut, his Swedish vodka of choice. When he couldn’t make his order understood he just pointed at the bottle with the blue logotype and added a bottle of tomato juice.
The place was almost devoid of customers. Hurtree sat down across the table from a middle-aged man drinking straight vodka from a water glass. He poured a mixture of tomato juice and vodka into his own glass, then raised it in a salute to the man across the table. They began a conversation of waggling arms, drawings and German verbs. It was a bizarre way to communicate but it seemed to work.
Hurtree found out there were several trains before he would have to leave in order to catch his ferry back to Stockholm, so he decided to use the welcome that his vodka salute had given him by trying to find out if anyone in Paldiski knew of the Shkval torpedo. He wrote the word on a beer mat and passed it over to his drinking mate.
“Shkval?” asked Hurtree.
“Da, Shkval,” said his drinking mate as he pointed towards the town behind them, then gesturing the wiggling movements of a fish before throwing his arms in the air, indicating a huge explosion. “Shkval fabrik,” he said, pointing again to the town. “Shkval machen hier.” His eyes narrowed as he sipped another large swallow of vodka from his glass. “Und plutonium.”