Instead of the yes he had expected, he received handcuffs and a free ride to the nearest jail cell. When all was said and done, the speeder’s brother was behind bars, too. Even though he denied everything.
‘I have never seen this man in my entire life,’ he said to the prosecutor in Katrineholm district court.
‘But isn’t that your brother?’ said the prosecutor.
‘Yes, but I’ve never seen him.’
But the prosecutor had a few things up his sleeve. For one, he had photographs of the brothers together, from their childhood on. The fact that they were listed as living at the same address in Gnesta was another matter of aggravation, and then there was the fact that a large part of the spoils from the robbery had been found in the wardrobe they shared. Furthermore, the brothers’ honest parents testified against them.
The man who had since been called the Jeweller got four years in Hall Prison, the same as his brother. After that the brother flew back to Chile while the Jeweller supported himself by selling cheap trinkets imported from Bolivia. The plan was to save all the money in a pile until he had a million kronor, at which point he planned to retire to Thailand. He had met Nombeko at the markets. It wasn’t as if they actually spent time together, but they nodded at each other in passing.
The problem was that the Swedish market crowd never really seemed to understand the magnitude of silver plastic Bolivian hearts. After two years of hard work, the Jeweller was struck by depression; he thought that everything was just shit (which it essentially was). He had made it to 125,000 kronor in pursuit of his million, but he couldn’t take it any more. Instead he went to Solvalla one Saturday afternoon in his depressed condition and used all his money to place what was by far the biggest bet of all on that week’s V75 horse racing, with the intention of losing it all and then going to lie down and die on a park bench in Humlegården.
But then horse after horse performed as it should (but never had before), and when all the races were over, one solitary winner with seven correct picks was able to collect 36.7 million kronor, of which he received 200,000 as cash in hand.
The Jeweller decided to forget about dying on a park bench in Humlegården; instead he went to the Café Opera and drank himself silly.
In this he succeeded beyond expectations. He woke up the next afternoon in a suite at the Hilton at Slussen, naked except for his socks and underwear. His first thought, given the presence of his underwear, was that he might not have had as much fun as last night’s circumstances called for, but he couldn’t say for sure because he didn’t remember.
He ordered breakfast from room service. While eating his scrambled eggs and drinking his champagne, he decided what he wanted to do with his life. He put aside the Thailand idea. Instead he would stay in Sweden and invest in a business of his own for real.
The Jeweller would become . . . a jeweller.
Out of pure malevolence, he set up shop next door to the boutique in Gnesta where he had once been trained and that he later robbed. Because Gnesta is Gnesta, where one jeweller is almost too many, it took the Jeweller less than six months to drive his former boss out of business. Incidentally, this was the same man who had nearly called the police that time Nombeko had paid a visit.
Then one day in May 1994, the Jeweller ran into a black woman outside the library on his way to work. Where had he seen her before?
‘The Jeweller!’ said Nombeko. ‘It’s been a long time. How is life treating you today?’
Oh yes, she was the woman who had gone around with that screwy American and those three Chinese girls who were impossible to get anywhere with.
‘Fine, thanks,’ he said. ‘I’ve exchanged silver plastic Bolivian hearts for the real thing, you could say. I’m a jeweller here in town these days.’
Nombeko thought this was extraordinary. Suddenly and strangely, she had a contact in Swedish jewellers’ circles. And one who seemed to have flexible morals, or possibly no morals at all.
‘Fantastic,’ she said. ‘I guess it’s Mr Jeweller from now on. Might you have any interest in making a deal or two? I happen to have some rough diamonds to hand, and I would be happy to exchange them for money.’
The Jeweller thought about how impossible God was to understand. On the one hand, he had always prayed to him; on the other hand, he had seldom received anything in return. And then there was that ill-fated robbery, which ought to work against him when it came to the divine. Instead, the Lord was dropping riches straight into his lap.
‘My interest in rough diamonds is very keen, Miss . . . Nombeko, was it?’
So far, business hadn’t gone at all as the Jeweller had planned. But now he could start planning to rob himself on the side once more.
Three months later, all twenty-eight diamonds had been traded in and sold on. Instead, Nombeko and Holger had a backpack full of money. Nineteen point six million kronor, which was probably 15 per cent less than if the deal hadn’t had to be carried out so discreetly. But, as Holger Two said, ‘Nineteen point six million is still nineteen point six million.’
He had just signed up to take the autumn university entrance exams. The sun was shining and the birds were chirping.
PART FOUR
Life need not be easy, provided only that it is not empty.
Lise Meitner
CHAPTER 14
On an unwelcome visitor and a sudden death
In the spring of 1994, South Africa became the first and, up to then, the only country in the world to develop its own nuclear weapons and then relinquish them. It voluntarily allowed its nuclear programme to be dismantled just before the white minority was forced to hand over power to the blacks. The process took several years and was carried out under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which, when everything was officially finished, confirmed that South Africa’s six atomic bombs no longer existed.
The seventh, however, the one that had never existed – that one still existed. Furthermore, it would soon be on the move.
It all started when the angry young woman grew tired of never being apprehended by the police. What the hell were they thinking? She drove too fast, she crossed solid lines, she honked at old ladies as they crossed the street. Yet year after year went by in which not a single officer showed any interest in her. There were thousands of police officers in this country, all of whom ought to go to hell, and Celestine hadn’t had a chance to inform a single one of them of this fact.
The thought that she might get to sing ‘Non, je ne regrette rien’ was still too pleasing for her to stop doing her job, but something really must happen soon, before she woke up to find herself part of the establishment. Just think of what Holger Two had suggested a few days earlier: that she should get an actual driving licence. That would ruin everything!
In frustration, she went up to see Holger One in Bromma and told him they had to make their mark now.
‘Our mark?’ said Holger One.
‘Yes. Stir things up.’
‘Well, what are you thinking?’
The angry young woman couldn’t say, exactly. But she went to the nearest store and bought a copy of the shitty bourgeois newspaper Dagens Nyheter, which was only there to be the tool of the powers that be. Damn them!
And then she paged through it. And paged through it some more. She found a lot of things that made her even angrier than her base level of anger, but above all it was a short article on page seventeen that really got her going.
‘Here!’ she said. ‘We just cannot accept this!’
The article said that the relatively newly formed party the Sweden Democrats was planning a demonstration at Sergels Torg in Stockholm the next day. Almost three years earlier, the party had received 0.09 per cent of the votes in the Swedish parliamentary election and, according to the angry young woman, that was too fucking many votes. She explained to her boyfriend that the party consisted of secret racists and was led by an ex-Nazi, and that they were all crazy about the royal family!
; The angry young woman felt that what the Sweden Democrats’ demonstration needed more than anything else was . . . a counter-demonstration!
The part about the party’s views on the status of the king and queen caused Holger’s anger to flare up, too. It would be so wonderful to influence opinions in the spirit of his father, Ingmar, after all these years.
‘Well, I do have the day off tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Come on, let’s go home to Gnesta and get ready!’
Nombeko came across Holger One and the angry young woman as they were making signs for the next day’s protest. The signs read SWEDEN DEMOCRATS OUT OF SWEDEN, NO MORE ROYAL FAMILY, SEND THE KING TO THE MOON and SWEDEN DEMOCRATS ARE STUPID.
Nombeko had read a bit about that party, and she nodded in recognition. Being a former Nazi was, of course, not an impediment to having a political career. Almost all the prime ministers of South Africa in the second half of the twentieth century had had that very same background. It was true that the Sweden Democrats had only received a tenth of a per cent of the vote in the last parliamentary election, but their rhetoric was based on fear, and Nombeko believed that fear had a bright future ahead of it; it always had.
So the part about SWEDEN DEMOCRATS ARE STUPID was not something Nombeko could really agree with. It was actually quite clever, as a Nazi, to stop referring to oneself as such.
Upon hearing this, the angry young woman gave a speech, the theme of which was that she suspected Nombeko of being a Nazi herself.
Nombeko left the sign manufacturers and went to find Two to tell him that they might be facing a problem, in that Two’s disaster of a brother and his girlfriend were on their way to Stockholm to make trouble.
‘Ah well, show me a peace that lasts,’ said Holger Two, without knowing the extent of the misery that awaited.
* * *
The main speaker at the Sweden Democrats’ demonstration was the party leader himself. He stood on a homemade podium, microphone in hand, and talked about what Swedish values were, and about the threats thereto. He demanded, among other things, an end to immigration and the reintroduction of the death penalty, which had not been practised in Sweden since November 1910.
Before him stood about fifty like-minded people, who applauded. And just behind them were the angry young woman and her boyfriend, whose signs were still under wraps. The plan was to break in with a counter-demonstration just as the party leader finished speaking, so there was no risk of being drowned out.
As the speech went on, however, it turned out that Celestine was not only angry and young but also in need of a toilet. She whispered in Holger’s ear that she needed to sneak into Kulturhuset next to the square, but that she would soon be back.
‘And then we’ll give them more than they can handle,’ she said, giving her Holger a kiss on the cheek.
Unfortunately, the speaker was soon finished with what he had to say. The audience started drifting in various directions. Holger One felt that he had to act alone, and he tore the protective paper off the first sign to reveal SWEDEN DEMOCRATS ARE STUPID. He really would have preferred SEND THE KING TO THE MOON, but he would have to make do. Plus, this one was Celestine’s favourite.
The sign had not been exposed for more than a few seconds before two young Sweden Democrats caught sight of it. They were not pleased.
Even though both of them were on disability benefits, they ran up to Holger, tore the sign from his hands and tried to rip it to pieces. When this didn’t work, one of them started to bite the sign, thus suggesting that the wording on the sign had some basis in reality.
When even this did not attain the desired result, the other one began to hit Holger over the head with the aforementioned sign until it broke in half. After that they jumped on him in their black boots until they grew tired. The thoroughly jumped-upon Holger remained on the ground, but he had enough strength to whimper ‘Vive la République’ at the men, who immediately felt provoked again. Not that they understood what Holger had said, but he’d said something, and for that he deserved another beating.
When they had finished assault number two, they decided to get rid of the wreckage. They dragged Holger by the hair and one arm all the way across the square and into the subway system. There they tossed him on the ground before the turnstile guard and started on assault number three, which consisted of even more kicking, along with the suggestion that Holger, who could no longer move, ought to crawl down into the subway and never again show his ugly mug above ground.
‘Vive la République,’ the beaten but valiant Holger repeated as the men walked away mumbling, ‘Fucking foreigners.’
Holger lay where he was, but then he was helped to his feet by a reporter from Swedish Television, who was there with a cameraman to do a segment on marginal extreme-right parties with wind in their sails.
The reporter asked who Holger was and which organization he represented. The completely ruined and confused victim said that he was Holger Qvist from Blackeberg and that he represented all the citizens of this country who suffered under the yoke of the monarchy.
‘So you’re a republican?’ said the reporter.
‘Vive la République,’ said Holger for the third time in four minutes.
The angry young woman had done her business and come back out of Kulturhuset, but she didn’t find her Holger until she had followed the mass of people into the subway. She pushed her way through, shoved the TV reporter aside, and pulled her boyfriend down into the underworld for the commuter train journey to Gnesta.
The story might have ended there if it weren’t for the cameraman, who had managed to capture the entire assault, beginning with the very first attack on Holger, including the fruitless sign-biting. What’s more, he had managed to zoom in on Holger’s tortured face at the very moment he had lain on the ground and whispered ‘Vive . . . la . . . République’ after the two Sweden Democrats, who were both fit as fiddles and on disability benefits.
In its edited version, the assault was thirty-two seconds long and was broadcast along with the short interview on the news programme Rapport that same evening. The dramaturgy of those thirty-two seconds was so exceptional that the TV channel managed to sell broadcast rights to thirty-three countries within twenty-six hours. Soon, more than a billion people all over the world had seen Holger One get beaten up.
* * *
The next morning, Holger was awakened by the pain throughout his body. But nothing appeared to be broken, and he decided to go to work after all. Two of the three helicopters had missions that morning, and that meant a lot of paperwork.
He arrived ten minutes after the actual start of his working hours, and he was immediately ordered by his boss, who was also one of the pilots, to go home again.
‘I saw you on TV last night. How can you even stand up after that beating? Go home and rest – hell, go on holiday,’ said his boss, taking off in one of the Robinson R66s, destination Karlstad.
‘You fucking nut, you’re just going to scare people, looking like that,’ said the other pilot, taking off in turn in the other Robinson R66, destination Gothenburg.
The lonely Holger was left behind, along with the remaining pilotless Sikorsky S-76.
Holger couldn’t bring himself to go home. Instead he limped into the kitchen, poured some morning coffee and returned to his desk. He didn’t really know how he should feel. On the one hand, he was totally beaten to a pulp. On the other hand, Rapport’s video had been an enormous success! Maybe it would lead to a republican movement all over Europe!
Holger had realized that there was hardly a single television station worth its salt that hadn’t broadcast the clip of him being beaten up. He had received a sound thrashing. And it was good TV. Holger couldn’t help but feel proud of himself.
At that moment, a man stepped into the office. Unannounced.
The customer looked at Holger, who immediately felt that this was a man and a situation he wanted to avoid. But there was no way past the man, and his gaze was so determined that Holger rema
ined seated.
‘How may I help you?’ he asked nervously.
‘Let me introduce myself,’ the man said in English. ‘My name is something that is none of your business, and I am a representative of an intelligence agency whose name doesn’t concern you. When people steal things from me, I get angry. If the stolen object is an atomic bomb, I get even angrier. And incidentally, my rage has been building up for a long time. In short, I am very angry.’
Holger Qvist had no idea what was going on. This feeling was not unusual for him, but that didn’t mean he was comfortable with it. The man with the determined gaze (who had an equally determined voice) took two enlarged photographs from his briefcase and placed them on the desk in front of him. The first clearly showed Holger Two in a loading bay, and the other showed Two and another man loading a large crate into a truck with the help of a forklift. The crate. The photographs were dated 17 November 1987.
‘That’s you,’ said the agent, pointing at Holger’s brother. ‘And that is mine,’ he said, pointing at the crate.
* * *
Mossad Agent A had spent seven years suffering on account of the missing nuclear weapon. He had spent just as long being determined to locate it. He had started by working along two parallel tracks. One was to find the thief and hope that both thief and stolen property were still in the same place. The other was to keep his ear to the ground, listening carefully in case an atomic bomb in western Europe or elsewhere in the world were to be offered up for sale. If he couldn’t get to the bomb via the thief, it might work to go through the fence.
First A travelled from Johannesburg to Stockholm and began by going through the tapes from the security cameras at the Israeli embassy. From the camera at the gate it was easy to see that it was in fact Nombeko Mayeki who had signed for her package in front of the gatekeeper.
Was it possible that it was just a mix-up? No, because why would she have come to the embassy in a truck? Twenty pounds of antelope meat could just about fit in a bike basket, after all.
The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden Page 20