PRAISE FOR ASK NO MERCY
“Ask No Mercy is unnervingly topical and exciting! Österdahl is the master of conspiracy. Read it!”
—Camilla Läckberg
FOR TEN SWEDES MUST DIE
“Martin Österdahl writes so easily that the five hundred pages feel like less. He’s skillfully combining interesting historical facts with present times. And most of all he’s phenomenal at constructing a thrilling and entertaining plot.”
—Nisse Scherman, DAST Magazine
“I’ve found a new favorite author in the suspense genre, Martin Österdahl. Ten Swedes…is a real hit.”
—Nadine’s Bokhylla
“I am impressed. A stellar novel. Really good reading.”
—Håkan Nesser, award-winning author of the Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery series
ALSO BY MARTIN ÖSTERDAHL
Ask No Mercy
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2017 by Martin Österdahl
Translation copyright © 2019 by Peter Sean Woltemade
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Previously published as Tio svenskar måste dö by Bokförlaget Forum in Sweden in 2017. Translated from Swedish by Peter Sean Woltemade. First published in English by AmazonCrossing in 2019.
Published by AmazonCrossing, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and AmazonCrossing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781542040617
ISBN-10: 1542040612
Cover design by Jae Song
For my mother, Margareta
CONTENTS
START READING
PROLOGUE
SATURDAY, AUGUST 12, 2000
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Arholma, May 1945
SUNDAY, AUGUST 13
8
9
10
11
Skeppsmyra, May 1945
MONDAY, AUGUST 14
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
Rinkaby Internment Camp, Kristianstad, November 1945
TUESDAY, AUGUST 15
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
Örebro Field Hospital, December 1945
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 16
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
Örebro, December 1945
THURSDAY, AUGUST 17
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
Örebro, January 1946
FRIDAY, AUGUST 18
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
Kolyma, Siberia, February 1952
SATURDAY, AUGUST 19
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
Berlin, October 1994
SUNDAY, AUGUST 20
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
Riga, April 1996
EPILOGUE
AFTERWORD
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Beloved Mara’s room
Is full of small cradles.
When one is set in motion
They all move with it.
PROLOGUE
Captain Lyomkin looked out over the control room. As many of the submarine’s 111-person crew as there was room for had gathered around him, some squatting, some on benches, some standing.
“Sergey,” said Lyomkin. “We’ve heard that you’re going to be the admiral of the Russian fleet one day. Is that true?”
“Yes, Captain!” Sergey answered without hesitation.
The comrade who stood closest to him clapped him on the shoulder. “Your wife certainly gave me that impression when I met her at the officers’ club in Vidyayevo one dark night in December last year.”
The men laughed loudly. Smiling, Sergey shook his head.
“For that reason, Mr. Future Admiral, this day marks an important step in your life. Let us begin.”
Lyomkin gave Sergey a large tin cup. He then set a rusty hammer hanging from the ceiling in motion, swinging back and forth.
“Go ahead.”
Sergey held the cup in front of his mouth. Lyomkin watched as the young submariner’s gaze passed from face to face. They all looked at Sergey expectantly: strong, intelligent eyes; warm smiles. Lyomkin himself had gone through the same rite of initiation when he had first joined a submarine crew.
Brothers. Friends for life.
Sergey was now to be initiated into the Northern Fleet and to become a member of the submarine’s indomitable, unsurpassed crew. The men around him had been selected because of their competence, but also because of their ability to get along and work together for long periods of time in tight spaces far below the surface of the sea.
“Today I will become a member of the submarine crew,” Sergey began. “I will drink seawater from the Barents Sea, from a depth of eighty meters, in one draft, without taking a break to breathe.”
He glanced at his captain.
Lyomkin nodded, indicating that he should continue.
“I do this so that all will go well.”
Sergey closed his eyes, raised the cup to his lips, and let the ice-cold water run down his throat. When the cup was empty, he opened his eyes and set it down in front of Lyomkin.
He then turned
to the hammer hanging from the ceiling. He bent his knees and leaned forward. To the echoing sound of the men’s rejoicing and applause, he let the hammer strike his mouth in a kiss that sealed his entry into the most legendary and heroic company in the Russian armed forces.
When the rite of initiation was completed, a communications officer approached Lyomkin.
“Captain, we’ve received orders to surface and await the transmission of further information via telephone.”
What now? thought Lyomkin. New directives so close to the beginning of the exercise? He looked at his wristwatch. The rite had gone on about a minute too long, but it was important to maintain morale on board. Now there wasn’t much time before the torpedo room needed to be manned. The fleet’s highest-ranking officers’ amateurish leadership had negatively affected preparations in so many ways that Lyomkin was no longer surprised, but this again reminded him of his disappointment. Things were not what they used to be.
He swallowed his annoyance, turned to his helmsman, and ordered him to rise to periscope depth. He ordered the communications officer to extend the radio antennae and asked him to precede him to the communications room.
At depths greater than twenty meters, communication with the outside world could be achieved only via ZEVS, a top-secret communications system the Russian army had developed. ZEVS operated the most powerful transmitter in Europe, and the power plant required to run it was on the Kola Peninsula, which they had just left behind. There were two problems with ZEVS. First, it could not be used to send a reply, only to receive information. And second, it took a very long time for a message to come through because the frequency allowed for the transmission of only a few letters per minute. Lyomkin wondered when someone had begun sending the message. And whether this someone was aware of the precarious situation in which the submarine found itself.
He sat down and, when his colleague gave him the go-ahead sign, picked up the receiver of the underwater telephone.
“This is Ivan Lyomkin, captain first rank and commander of K-141, the Kursk,” he said.
“Lyomkin, I’m aware that this is a bad time to be calling,” said the man on the other end.
He didn’t sound like any of the officers in the uppermost echelon of the Northern Fleet’s command structure.
“Who are you? And where are you calling from?”
“I’m calling from the Russian embassy in Stockholm.”
Stockholm? The man had neither given his name nor specified his military rank, which could only mean that he was a member of a Russian armed forces branch to which Lyomkin himself had once belonged. Its personnel never announced their presence or revealed their true identities. The fact that the man had access to the submarine’s coordinates and to ZEVS suggested that his actions had been authorized at the highest level.
“What can I do for you?” asked Lyomkin.
“In 1984 you participated in a secret submarine operation in the Baltic Sea. This operation involved transporting a weapon and going ashore to hide it in a secret location on Swedish territory.”
Lyomkin shivered as though he’d just drained the cup of ice-cold seawater himself. He had done all he could to forget the operation the man was referring to. That had been one of the darkest periods of his life. What they had done back then had been done in desperation. And it could have had terrible consequences.
He covered the telephone’s speaker with his hand and nodded to the communications officer, indicating that he should leave the room.
“Continue,” said Lyomkin when he was alone.
“You were ordered to carry a key with you at all times.”
Lyomkin reached inside his shirt collar with his free hand, feeling for the silver chain.
“I was ordered to carry it on my person and defend it with my life for five years. Five years! Eleven more years have passed since then!”
“Things have changed,” said the man.
Lyomkin closed his eyes and tried to understand what was going on. The man in Stockholm spoke calmly and monotonously; his voice revealed nothing. Was this part of the exercise? A test of his ability to withstand stress, developed by one of the most sadistic minds in the Russian military intelligence service? Or was this for real?
The chain between his fingers was warm. He managed to remain calm and said, “I am still protecting it with my life.”
“What I have heard about you is true, then,” said the man at the other end. “You are a man Mother Russia can always trust, regardless of the situation.”
Lyomkin knew better than to fall for flattery.
“What is it that’s happened?”
“The weapon has been moved.”
Suddenly Lyomkin felt as though his lungs couldn’t take in oxygen.
This is not possible.
“How?” was all he managed to get out.
“We have registered the stress signal that the weapon sends when it gets separated from its permanent energy source.”
The energy source to which he had connected it. Deep in a Swedish forest. It can’t be.
Lyomkin had heard the recent rumors about how his homeland’s armed forces had lost control of large quantities of their weapons. They were considered so dangerous—not least to the very nations that had deployed them—and regarded as such a threat to world peace that the Soviet Union and the United States had agreed to prohibit their use for all time. At least one of the signatory nations had violated this agreement. Lyomkin had played a role in that himself.
The fact that the object had been separated from its energy source meant it was now running on a battery, a very old battery. Lyomkin had no idea how long it would last. If the individual who had moved the object was planning to use it, the world was facing a doomsday scenario. A third world war could be triggered.
I have the key that can disarm the weapon. But I was not alone in 1984.
“There were two of us,” said Lyomkin.
“Yes, I know,” said the man. “We are looking for the other man—your colleague. I assume you don’t know where he is? Or what he’s been doing in recent years?”
In recent years? Good Lord, thought Lyomkin. The rumors are true. We’ve lost control completely.
Lyomkin thought of the other agent who had been with him in the Swedish forest. Of his grim face. His short, compact, rock-hard body. The way he had moved through the dense forest like a gazelle, despite the weight of the object they were carrying.
“I haven’t seen him or heard from him since we concluded the operation.”
“I understand. That’s all for now. We’ll have to talk again when your exercise is over. Right now you have a submarine to command, Captain Lyomkin.”
The exercise won’t be over until three days from now. It could be too late then.
Lyomkin said nothing. He put the handset back in its place on the communications console. He looked at it, thought he could see traces his sweaty palm had left on its shiny red plastic. He shook his head as if to cast off the thoughts the conversation had awakened, stood up, and again looked at the watch on his wrist. It was time to leave it behind and get back to reality. He stuck his head outside the room and waved the communications officer over.
“I’ll have to do it from here. Connect me to all compartments.”
The officer nodded and handed him a microphone. From the speakers, Lyomkin heard his own voice: “Battle stations.”
Still speaking into the microphone, he said, “Alarm drill. Torpedo attack.”
He walked into the control room. The answer from the torpedo room came through the speaker on his central console.
“Dobro.”
Good. The go-ahead to fire practice torpedo number one. Target: the Pyotr Velikiy (“Peter the Great”), a battle cruiser that was 250 meters long and equipped with nuclear weapons.
Seconds later the submarine shook so violently that Lyomkin was thrown against the port panel. Had he not managed to fling his arm up at the last second to protect himself, he would surely ha
ve had his neck broken.
It took him a few seconds to calm down. What had happened?
In the orange emergency lighting, he saw men in the control room lying on the floor, unconscious or worse. Everything that hadn’t been secured to the walls or floor had been thrown across the room. There was complete silence.
He crawled back to the middle of the room. His left arm was broken, and his head throbbed with pain.
Were we hit by a live torpedo? Or was that a collision? With what?
In front of him, young Sergey lay motionless on the floor.
I do this so that all will go well…
The stress signal from the Swedish forest.
“Future Admiral?” Lyomkin shouted.
Lyomkin crawled over to Sergey and prodded him, trying to get him to move. The young man moaned.
“Sergey!”
Sergey’s eyes were open. His chest was rising and falling. He was alive but in shock. Lyomkin took hold of his collar and shook him.
“Are you uninjured, Sergeant?”
Sergey nodded yes.
“Good. Follow me.”
They crawled along the floor. Their breathing was labored, and Lyomkin realized that carbon monoxide was spreading through the submarine. If they couldn’t stop the gas from spreading, they would all be dead soon. He reached the hole in the floor where a ladder led to the lower deck and the torpedo room.
“Go down the ladder carefully and report to me on what you see down there. I have to get to the reactors and the engine room in the stern.”
“Yes, Captain!”
Walking in a crouch, Lyomkin continued to the round opening of the tunnel that led to the submarine’s most remote compartments. Before he left the room, he glanced behind him.
As the sergeant took hold of the ladder’s metal rungs, Lyomkin saw the skin on his hands burn off. A second later Lyomkin’s eardrums burst from the boom of an explosion, a white light blinding him as the blast threw him backward and hurled Sergey’s body into the air.
In the ninth compartment Lyomkin sat with his back against the wall of the machine room, together with the twenty-three crew members who were still alive. During the minutes that had followed the explosion, the submarine had sunk rapidly, and the hull had struck the seabed. The men were shaking from the cold. The water level in the room was rising steadily: because the submarine was no longer moving forward, the water sluices next to the propeller could not push the water out. The pressure in the compartment was also rising quickly. The oxygen was nearly depleted, and the men were beginning to feel the effects of carbon monoxide poisoning.
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