After the Monsoon

by Robert Karjel

  The next day, she called back. Apparently, there were detectives working on the case, even if their time clock wasn’t ticking at the same rate as Grip’s. The question was: who would have picked up the money in the spare-parts box once the aircraft landed? Five civilians handled spare-parts deliveries to the military in Uppsala, two women and three men. When they looked more closely at the records, they discovered a thirty-year-old man who’d worked there for over a year. A few red lights flashed: driving without a license, bad credit history, and a lot of complaints from an ex for not paying child support. Moreover, he’d done three tours with the international forces. An ax who’d lost his footing. That’s how far the detectives had gotten. Astrid Süss, the analyst, had contacted them and forged ahead, and that same day she’d gone to Uppsala with two criminal investigators. They’d spent a few hours with the deadbeat dad, sitting on wobbly chairs inside the old echoing repair shop on the air force base.

  “Nervous type,” said Süss on the phone. “When the investigators asked questions, he frowned and sweated. If they’d been using a polygraph test, the needles would have gone nuts every time they mentioned this Fredrik Hansson in Djibouti. He rubbed his face and turned bright red, but he didn’t utter a goddamn syllable. Clearly, he’s smart, he wants to rat and get out of this mess, but he knows he’ll be in deep trouble. We told him he’d never get to serve on a foreign mission again if he didn’t cooperate. Then he really lost it. He was so scared he nearly shat himself.”

  “Believe me, I know how that looks,” replied Grip.

  “Anyway, given his behavior, this is certainly our guy.”

  The rest of Astrid Süss’s report detailed the list of goods that the suspect had recently sent from Uppsala, according to the detectives. Most of the addresses were for the military and obvious subcontractors. But every other week, a package arrived from Djibouti addressed to Swiftclean Co. in Åkeshov. The package was always marked: Kretskort-MFD.

  “That’s some kind of helicopter maintenance service. But Swiftclean doesn’t have anything to do with aviation. It’s a cleaning business fronted by a bald Swede with a BMW, who hires a few hundred immigrants to clean offices in the city.”

  “Who handles Swiftclean’s mail?” Grip asked.

  “It could be anyone there.”

  “Check them out?”

  “The backgrounds of all the people who work there?”

  “Exactly.”

  “There’s the guy with the BMW, Sven Rydén, and about two hundred people named Amadayo and Caydiid. A slew of people, some with residence permits and others who are undocumented, each with their own story, all thinking they have something they need to hide. To get to the bottom of it . . .”

  “. . . will take weeks,” Grip said, interrupting.

  “That’s time I don’t have. I’m just doing this on the side for you.”

  “Try another round with that sweaty guy in Uppsala.”

  “He won’t talk. No matter what we dig up on him, we can’t twist his arm hard enough to make him feel it. It’s Fredrik Hansson he’s scared of.”

  So there was a whole assembly line. It seemed they would go to extreme measures to protect something so profitable. And they knew who’d come after them. Grip couldn’t stop thinking about the story of the French lieutenant and the Russians. What they did to restore the balance of power. He thought about the man sweating in Uppsala, and he thought about himself. His own fear. It hit him every time he sat by himself, eating at one of the hotel restaurants, while Simon Stark still stayed in his room alone. They were both prisoners at the Kempinski, and they weren’t getting anywhere. Just for a little while, for an hour or so before dinner, he allowed himself to escape. He sat in the half-empty piano bar, but he never got a glance of recognition or a comment over the keys from Ayanna. Was this coming from her, or was he just wallowing in his own self-hatred?

  Grip watched the TV news in Sweden over the Internet. A piece on the evening news. Scandinavian Capital had held a press conference; apparently the pirate’s negotiator was still talking to them. A clean-shaven man without a tie, identified as the company spokesperson, appeared on the screen. He said: “Carl-Adam Bergenskjöld is not employed here, and he has not been for a long time.” The man tried to look sympathetic. “We want to support him any way we can, but this situation is not our company’s responsibility. The Swedish government must take this on. This is not about an employee, it’s about a family of Swedish citizens.” The man was surrounded by microphones and flashes. He nodded when someone asked if the ransom was still set at ten million dollars.

  From updates in online newspapers, he learned that Carl-Adam had been known as King Carl among venture capitalists, and that his specialty was mergers of medical companies. Dagens Nyheter had a link to an older article on ScandiCap, as they called it. Through its real estate operations at the UK tax haven of Jersey, the company had minimized profits in the previous year to a few tens of millions, but they gave virtually tax-free dividends to their partners, in some cases as much as several hundred million kronor each. The tabloid Aftonbladet latched on to this, adding up the totals from prior deals, and came up with a “Billionaires Club.” There were pictures of houses all built on the same cliff overlooking the sea at Antibes. One partner collected absurdly expensive wine, while another snatched up every painting he came across by Anders Zorn.

  Inside a fact box, the morning paper Svenska Dagbladet stated that on average, hostages were held in Somalia for six months, but some had sat there for more than two years. Others were never heard from again.

  33

  The negotiator arrived unannounced. His shirt was as smooth as ever, with his cuffs rolled up. This time he brought along a short, nervous man in rumpled clothing, who carried a cloth bag over his shoulder marked with a red cross.

  “Come here. Now,” called the negotiator to Carl-Adam, motioning for him to walk over to the table. “They say that you are weak. Darwiish understands something about protecting an investment.” He smiled, gesturing to the guard to leave them and waving quickly toward Carl-Adam again. “Your wound.”

  The doctor, if that’s what he was, set his bag on the table and put on his reading glasses, while Carl-Adam dragged himself over. Experienced hands cut through the dirty bandage, washing and cleaning out the opening.

  As he examined the wound, the man asked: “Do you have enough to drink?”

  “It’s difficult,” said Carl-Adam after a moment’s hesitation.

  “It is impossible,” said Jenny. She’d stood in the doorway, watching. “One bucket per day, for the four of us. They treat us worse than animals.”

  The man looked at her, surprised at first, from behind the glasses. Then he looked at the negotiator over the top of the frames. “They need to drink!” he said, adding something in Somali.

  The negotiator made a dismissive gesture, not entirely convincing, and spoke in Jenny’s direction: “You can economize better.”

  She rubbed her arm. “If this continues, we will die.”

  “Water,” said the man, as if he was thirsty himself, rolling a clean white bandage around Carl-Adam’s hand.

  “It’s not just water we need,” said Jenny, after a brief glance over her shoulder toward the children. “Our son, he . . . he has epilepsy. He needs Lamictal and Zonisamide, or he will die from the seizes he gets in this heat. What we brought with us has almost run out. Do you understand?”

  The man had left a couple of fresh bandages and gauze on the table.

  “If I understand?” he said, looking at her. He picked up a small white bandage roll and stood up, next to the other man. “This is what I can do,” he said, pointing to his bag. He snorted, with contempt that seemed directed at himself. “Your son . . . you must understand where we are?” He pulled out two boxes of tablets and put them next to the bandages. “Antibiotics, it is a miracle just to obtain these. Your husband needs them, for his wound. Three packages of bandages and clean gauze to swab with, those I can spare. Bu
t Zonisamide, here? Everyone deserves to live.” He pointed apologetically toward his bag again. “What do you want me to do?”

  “We have a supply, on the boat,” said Jenny, looking at the negotiator. “On board, we had enough to last for several months, but we weren’t allowed to bring it with us.”

  He didn’t reply.

  “He needs it every day, but now we’re down to giving him one in three. I’ve stretched it out as much as I could, but soon it will be gone. His seizures come more often, and they are increasingly severe. Soon all I’ll be able to do is pray that somehow my child’s life will be saved.”

  The man closed the straps on his bag and asked the negotiator something in Somali. Jenny had only learned a few words during her time in captivity. One of them was the word for water—biyo.

  The next morning, they received a new bucket of water, and then another came as usual in the afternoon. After a few days, they even dared to set aside a little for washing.

  One evening, while Jenny was dressing Carl-Adam’s wound, he said in an annoyed way: “Did you see that ring he was wearing?”

  “Who?”

  “The negotiator.”

  “Well, what about it?”

  “You didn’t notice? Very valuable. He makes money on this.”

  “Could be,” she replied, fastening the bandage with a safety pin. Jenny tried to muster some resentment toward the negotiator, but all she felt was simmering contempt for her own husband. Sebastian’s eyes rolled upward at least once a day.

  A few days later, a guard came in carrying two hoods. “The women,” he said.

  “Why? Where are you taking us?” But after the initial terror subsided, Jenny understood that Darwiish had finally agreed to let them go back to the MaryAnn for the medications. She and Alexandra were the only ones in any condition to move, and this time, the daughter was allowed to accompany her mother.

  They sat in the backseat of one of the two jeeps, bumping into each other, for what seemed an eternity under their hoods.

  From a distance, it looked like some kind of strange colonial outing, as they got out of the cars and onto the beach where the big sailboat was anchored, a little ways out. Two white women and a half-dozen African men—but the illusion was broken by the men’s weapons, the women’s sticking-up hair, sweaty from the hoods, and their clothes, which were turning into rags.

  The MaryAnn looked the same, standing there in calm seas. They heard an engine, and soon a skiff appeared, coming from a village on the horizon. Half the men stayed on the beach, while Jenny and Alexandra got into the boat.

  Aboard the MaryAnn, the first thing Jenny noticed was the piles of bird droppings on the deck. Even after the hijacking, she’d felt it was critical to maintain order on board. After the first days of chaos, she’d shown that she was the one who took care of the yacht. She kept everything stowed and clean, and she’d washed away Carl-Adam’s blood from the cockpit. She never left loose ropes, but now she saw that the ones she’d coiled so neatly when they anchored were missing. Who would need sailboat lines out here, she thought, without dwelling on it. Then she understood a little more. The door to the cockpit was smashed, split in two by powerful blows. On the floor of the salon lay scraps of paper and wood chips. Everything that could be moved was gone: cushions, boxes, cutlery, gas stove, mugs—everything. All the locks had been broken, and someone seemed to have gone looking for hidden compartments behind the teak panels with a crowbar.

  Alexandra hurried off to the children’s cabin, while Jenny went to the one she’d shared with Carl-Adam. There lay the spinnaker, yanked out and left in a heap on the bed that had no mattress. At least there was one sail left, but there were no lines left on deck to hoist it. For a moment, she put off looking for what she was seeking, in the closet, in the little steel safe. It was meant for valuables, and she’d kept a few things inside. But after she’d been forced to open it for the pirates, on that first day, and they’d grabbed what little jewelry was there, it had been the storage place for Sebastian’s supply of meds.

  Jenny sat down on the spinnaker, which sank beneath her. The familiar feel of the fabric against her hand. She stretched out her foot and nudged the closet door open, so she could see all the way in. Where their clothes had once hung, now there was nothing. The steel safe hadn’t been smashed open, it had been ripped right out of the wall. There were a few black marks, and empty holes from the bolts. Her hopes dissolved into thin air.

  The MaryAnn could float, that was all.

  Jenny sat for a while, eventually becoming aware of the sailcloth under her again and hearing the sounds of Alexandra farther aft. She stood and then, with her daughter, climbed back up. The pirates waiting on deck didn’t seem to care that their hostages left the sailboat as empty-handed as when they’d arrived.

  When the skiff approached land, Alexandra took her hand. Jenny let out a sob but held herself together. She thought the real tears would come when the jeep drove off, under her hood when no one could see, but nothing came. She just felt Alexandra’s head against her shoulder and then she fell asleep.

  Jenny didn’t say much when they returned to the back room. Hopelessness shaped into a few words. She just said that the safe was gone, nothing more. Then there was the usual silence, with exhaustion and boredom. The day’s movements were all so familiar that when Alexandra started to read her book and some plastic rustled, both Carl-Adam and Jenny turned. A familiar sound that they nonetheless couldn’t place.

  She held up her hand. “At least I got this.” The bright yellow of a bag marked Zoo, full of little red gummy monkeys.

  “Where did you keep it?”

  “They would have taken it if I hadn’t hidden it on me.”

  But Jenny meant aboard the boat.

  Alexandra’s eyes had a touch of defiance. “You told me and Sebastian that we weren’t allowed to eat candy on board, except on Saturdays. So I had a hiding place.” She opened the bag.

  “Is today Wednesday?” Carl-Adam asked, as if someone mentioning a day of the week had reminded him of something.

  “No, Dad, it’s Thursday,” said Alexandra, stretching out her arm, so Sebastian could take some without having to get up.

  When the pirates changed guards a few days later, they seemed to forget about the new orders. Jenny yelled, trying to explain that they needed more water to survive, but the new guards were indifferent, and the morning bucket never came. Two buckets meant life; one was pure misery. The first time Jenny forced herself not to drink was unbearable.

  34

  “That apartment Fredrik Hansson has in Kungsholmen . . .”

  “Yes?” replied Grip, on the phone.

  “. . . it’s a two-bedroom apartment, and he also rents three parking spaces in the basement.” It was Astrid Süss who’d called him.

  “I checked out that basement,” she continued, “in the garage. His Mazda was sitting there. Low-slung, nice condition, just waiting for him to come home, so he can go out trawling on a warm summer night.”

  Süss cleared her throat and continued: “The spot next to the Mazda is empty, and then there’s a white Passat, around five years old, unremarkable.”

  “In one of his three spots?”

  “Yes.”

  “In my files, it says only the Mazda is registered to him.”

  “Mine say the same,” said Süss. “The Passat is registered to one Khalid Delmar.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The VW Passat in Hansson’s spot is registered to a Somali. I asked a neighbor, and the Passat is almost always there.”

  “Khalid, you say?”

  “Khalid Delmar, thirty-one years old, has lived in Sweden since the early nineties.”

  “And where is this Khalid now?”

  “No clue.”

  “And his background?”

  “There’s nothing, no criminal record. Only that he owns a white Passat.”

  “Damn.”

  “But guess what, his uncle also lives h
ere. And his uncle is the owner of Swiftclean.”

  “Swiftclean?”

  “Yes, Swiftclean, the place that receives a box of aviation parts from Uppsala every two weeks. Or did.”

  “Wasn’t there some bald Swedish . . .”

  “He’s just the CEO, owns ten percent. The uncle has ninety. It’s about having a Swedish front, a familiar name, and a voice without an accent on the phone, if you want to do business.”

  “Go nail the uncle.”

  “Deep breath, Grip. There are more than a hundred employees, so it’s not just a front. Sure, people come and go, and certainly some are undocumented, but their accounting is in order. This is not about his uncle. The Somalis seem comfortable talking about him—he’s respected, finds them jobs. But they get nervous when asked about Khalid. They only give evasive answers, if they remember anything at all.”

  “So what do you have?”

  “That he worked at Swiftclean, but it was a few years ago. Among those who know him, he seems to go by the nickname ‘the Jew.’”

  “The Jew?”

  “Yes, something like Yuhuudi in Somali, which apparently means just that—the Jew.”

  It took Grip a few seconds to sort out his memories.

  A bedroom in Husby with a closed door, the sound of rushing water, and screams from the bathroom. A young man trembling and mumbling in his grasp: “It’s the Jew you want.”

  “Hey, you still there?” asked Astrid Süss. More silence. “If you move ahead with this, you’re going to need people and time. I can’t do any more on the side. This requires resources. Real ones.”

  Grip knew exactly. He needed support from higher-ups, a written report, prosecutors to authorize searches, a wider circle that knew the full context. But no senior manager at Säpo wanted to—or even could—go near anything having to do with the raid in Husby. A total failure, with adrenaline-pumped henchmen playing Guantánamo in a bathroom. To base an investigation on confessions made under the threat of water boarding—it wasn’t just useless, it was collective suicide. He stood alone; the dice had been thrown by others.