Ten Swedes Must Die

by Martin Österdahl

  “Claes Callmér was the general director of the Migration Agency, Sofia. He was dismembered and numbered. Do you realize what that means?”

  “Despite what the tabloids have been trying to suggest for many years, we’ve never had serial killers to speak of in Sweden,” she said. “Not the kind you see in the movies.”

  “No, but we may have one now. That the murderer chose to number the victim suggests that he’s started a game, pushed a button on a chess clock that is now ticking, awaiting the next move. We have to see to it that it’s ours. Not his.”

  11

  The men with whom he had shared his adult life had given him the nickname Kandinsky, inspired by the work of the famous Russian artist.

  Kandinsky stood behind the counter at the Cage Bar on Kornhamnstorg in Gamla Stan and looked at Elias Skagerlind, the man sitting on the other side of the bar. Elias was drumming on the edge of the bar with his fat fingers and babbling away at him like a happy child.

  Kandinsky didn’t respond to the man’s yammering. He had learned not to talk more than necessary. For a period of several years, he had not uttered a single word. His silence had lasted so long that when he had begun talking again, it was as if the muscles in his jaws and his tongue had stopped working. He’d never regained their full functionality. But it didn’t matter. When he spoke he did so calmly and slowly, as his role models had taught him to do. This was how one got people to feel respect and fear. As Kandinsky focused on the Swedish man across from him, everything around the man became vague.

  Sweat lay in fine beads on Elias’s forehead and on his scalp where his hair had begun thinning. There were dark rings of sweat under the arms of his beige shirt, which was carelessly buttoned, wrinkled, unable to conceal his body’s softness despite the fact that it was a size too large. A man who’d lost his dignity.

  How long would you survive in my world? he thought. Not even twenty-four hours.

  Elias Skagerlind worked as a bouncer at Engelen, the nightclub next door to the Cage Bar, and was also employed as a substitute security guard at various Swedish armed-forces facilities. He was a reserve officer, and he had undergone training during his military service that qualified him to take on guard duty at military sites. Like Kandinsky, he was in his fifties and lived alone; he had drifted from one job to another since his divorce ten years before. With every year that had passed, he had apparently gotten thirstier.

  Elias raised a hand between them. “This one,” he said in English. He pointed to the speakers in the ceiling. “This one is really good.”

  The opening riff of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” thundered through the room. Kandinsky nodded. Without asking, he filled the shot glass in front of Elias with Jameson Irish Whiskey once again, marking down the pour in his books. Then, serving the combination Elias had been ordering all evening, he set a bottle of Bass Pale Ale next to the whiskey and slid the bottle and glass across the bar.

  Elias raised the shot glass and drained it. He laughed as he yelled “Kill!” on beat with the song and banged the empty shot glass down on the bar.

  The last time Kandinsky had heard someone shout the word kill, one of the greatest uprisings ever in a Soviet prison had begun. The man who started it was Kandinsky’s co-conspirator. He had not seen the man since then. Kandinsky’s punishment in the isolation cell following the uprising had been his most difficult test up to that point. Kandinsky had been permitted neither to sit down nor to lie down during waking hours. He had been forced to walk back and forth along the edge of his bed in the four square meters of his cell, watched constantly until the signal sounded and it was finally night. Strangely, Kandinsky’s perception of time transformed in the cell. By the time he was released, a day seemed no longer than an hour.

  Only regular guests had been in the bar this evening; most of them worked in the nightlife sector and had the night off. Now Kandinsky and the man were alone.

  Elias asked Kandinsky why he always wore a scarf indoors, even in August, when it was so damned hot. Thanks to his general taciturnity, Kandinsky did not have to make a particular effort to explain this; he told Elias that he wore it to “protect his aura,” and the conversation quickly petered out.

  If I were to tell you the truth, you wouldn’t be able to sleep at night. No matter how much liquor you poured down your throat.

  Elias took a deep draft of his beer and got up, heading toward the restrooms at the back of the bar. Kandinsky knew this was the chance he’d been waiting for. Elias had left his gray linen sports coat hanging on the barstool. It was dereliction of duty to leave it there, with his identification in the inside pocket. Probably Elias figured it was all right because only the two of them were in the bar and they knew each other. Either that or his judgment was impaired. Regardless of the reason, it was an unforgivable mistake.

  Kandinsky walked around the bar, stuck his hand into the jacket’s inside pocket, took out what he wanted, walked back behind the bar, and poured a new whiskey. Then he took a vial from the pocket of his jeans, unscrewed its little cap, and poured the sugar-like powder in it into the shot glass.

  On the streets of Stockholm, it was called a rape drug. But Kandinsky wasn’t planning to assault Elias sexually.

  What he had in mind was something far worse than that.

  Skeppsmyra, May 1945

  Ozols sat alone on the fishing boat’s foredeck with the photograph of Rebeka in his hands and looked out at the sun’s reflection on the water. The clothes Ahlström had given him were tight and uncomfortable. In the waters of the Stockholm archipelago, they were nevertheless preferable to a German uniform.

  How would Rebeka react when she saw him? They had met regularly in his shabby little room at the harbor in Tallinn during those summer months after they had first met. Rebeka’s mother had lost her fight against tuberculosis, and with her death, Rebeka’s father had lost his mind. The realities of war changed the rules of the courting game. She made no secret of the fact that she wanted Ozols to help her flee. Rebeka said the gods had three tasks: to give, preserve, and take life. That was the cycle of nature. For her, there was no such thing as sin.

  When Ozols jumped off the boat at the pier in Skeppsmyra, he turned toward Ahlström, who remained in the boat. Ozols nodded his thanks.

  “Good luck,” said Ahlström as the boat backed away, beginning its return to Arholma. “And don’t come back.”

  Ozols pulled his hat down over his head as he followed the little path that led from the pier up to what Ahlström had described as an Estonian colony. One of the huts, which stood about fifty meters from the pier, was painted yellow. That was where Ahlström said Ozols would find her.

  A well-polished black car was parked up on the main road. Ozols walked over to it and peeked in the window to make sure no one was sitting in it before he left the path and walked the last few meters across the grass to her house.

  Rebeka.

  He had not seen her after the Russians captured her Latvian home island in the fall of 1943 and set all the houses on fire. Months had passed, and he had feared the worst. But suddenly she was standing there in the harbor again, a whole year later, when the Triin was in port to pick up passengers for its last voyage.

  He had opened his arms to embrace her. But she had held up a hand.

  “This is your son,” she’d said, handing him a photograph.

  Ozols looked at the picture, which showed a child in the arms of a strange man.

  “Who is this?” he had asked. “Why is our son not with you?”

  Rebeka had shaken her head. “I am leaving him behind.”

  Ozols couldn’t make sense of what she’d said. “What do you mean? Why?”

  Rebeka looked over at the Triin. “You’ll find out everything once you’ve gotten me a place on the boat.”

  “But you don’t have the right document and you don’t know the language! They’re going to find out the truth!”

  “I’ve learned a little, enough to pass as Esto
nian. You’ll take care of the rest.”

  He looked at the photo again.

  “Wait here,” he said.

  He hurried aboard the boat and called Ahlström over. Gave him all the money he possessed and then nodded in Rebeka’s direction. As he headed back down the gangway toward Rebeka, the horn signaled that the boat was about to sail. On both sides people tried to get past him and aboard the boat, but he stretched out his arms.

  “Hurry, Rebeka!” he shouted through the tumult.

  She took quick steps in the corridor of space he’d created for her. Once they were standing face-to-face, he felt her warm breath on his cheeks. He pulled his bracelet off his arm.

  “I don’t have any more money,” he said, slipping the bracelet into her coat pocket. “But you can sell this if you get into difficulties.”

  She nodded at him. “The boy is with Father Cilpa. At the Jesuit children’s home. In Riga.”

  Now, standing in front of the door in Skeppsmyra, he looked at the photograph one last time before he put it in his pocket. He closed his eyes.

  Everything he’d done since then, he’d done so he would one day be able to find his son and get him back.

  His body trembled as he knocked on the door. A heavily built man dressed in black opened it. Before Ozols could react, the man had taken a firm grip on his arms and pushed him up against the wall. Another man, also dressed in black, stepped forward and handcuffed him.

  The well-polished car.

  Ahlström. I’m going to rip your guts out with my bare hands!

  “Komm mit!” said one of the policemen.

  “I speak Swedish,” said Ozols, but the men shook their heads and pushed him forward brusquely.

  It didn’t take him even a hundredth of a second to recognize her. Her reaction suggested that he wasn’t quite as easy to recognize. She had never seen him in anything other than the SS uniform.

  “This man claims that he is the father of your child. Is that true?” asked one of the policemen.

  Rebeka did not answer. She looked down at her hands, which were lying in her lap. Didn’t she understand what awaited him? He had attracted the attention of the Swedish Security Service.

  “According to our informant, you are a couple,” he continued. “He also claims that your name is Rebeka.”

  Rebeka looked him in the eye. “I have never seen him before.”

  “What are you saying?” Ozols screamed in their mother tongue.

  He understood, however. She was in Sweden on false grounds and didn’t want to risk anything, even for him.

  The policeman nodded to his colleague. They took hold of Ozols’s arms and began dragging him out of the cottage.

  “They’re going to send me to the Soviet Union. I’m going to be sentenced to death because I fought for the Germans. Or worse—to life in a Soviet penal camp! I did what I did for our country! For the Baltic countries! I would do anything to get our son back!”

  He struggled against the policemen.

  “I can prove I’m telling the truth,” he said in Swedish. “Ask her about the bracelet I gave her!”

  One of the men kicked him hard in the stomach. The air rushed out of him. They shackled his hands and feet, and he couldn’t fight back when they dragged him out of the cottage.

  The policeman who had kicked him took hold of his hair, yanking his head back. He bent down and whispered in Ozols’s ear. “We’ve heard enough out of you, Ozols. You’re going to pay a high price for your sins, like all other Nazis.”

  MONDAY,

  AUGUST 14

  12

  Max looked up at the wall-mounted TV in the kitchen while he made himself an open-faced sandwich. The morning news program was on, and it started with a new story, one that didn’t have to do with the exercise in the Arctic Ocean but seemed to be about a particularly brutal murder.

  He reached for the remote control and turned the volume up.

  “A man was found dead inside a chest at a farm auction in Skeppsmyra on the island of Björkö, in the northern Stockholm archipelago,” said the news anchor. “According to people we have spoken with at the scene, there is no doubt that this is a murder case.”

  Skeppsmyra? thought Max. Across the bay from Arholma. The old Estonian colony where his teacher Maj-Lis had lived.

  Could this be a feud between neighbors? Maybe summer residents got into an argument during the season’s last round of heavy drinking? But this seemed a little too sophisticated for something like that.

  A man who had yet to be identified had been dismembered. The news segment showed a grainy still image of the body. He couldn’t see much from the picture, but a journalist at the scene reported that something had been carved into the victim’s forehead.

  On the screen, the reporter tried to get into the auction building, but the police turned him away.

  He then stopped a female police officer in the muddy courtyard outside the building. According to the news graphic, her name was Sofia Karlsson, and she was a homicide detective at the National Bureau of Investigation in Stockholm.

  “What can you tell us about the victim?” asked the reporter.

  “I have no information at the moment,” said the detective.

  “Is it true that this was a so-called ritual murder?”

  Sofia Karlsson stopped and turned toward the camera. “Was I that damned unclear?”

  Max watched her walk away, calm, self-controlled. She was wearing a brown leather jacket, trendy light-blue jeans, and a pair of white sneakers covered with mud.

  It had been Sofia Karlsson who’d contacted him four years ago when a Russian agent was found dead on the helipad at Södersjukhuset as Pashie was fighting for her life against severe infections. Max had promised to call her but never did.

  Max knew that Vektor’s board chairman, Charlie Knutsson, had been in contact with her since. He’d told Max that she’d been transferred after the case involving the Russian agent. Those on the police force who were responsible for the transfer had spoken of inappropriate methods. Max often wondered whether she had kept quiet about what had really happened up there on the helipad.

  Had she protected him?

  Now she was back, as an investigator at the National Bureau of Investigation. The fact that they were on the scene so early for a murder in Skeppsmyra suggested that this was no ordinary case.

  Max opened his cell phone’s contacts. He wasn’t sure he’d kept her number.

  But there it was. Sofia Karlsson.

  He wanted to call her; he owed her that. He knew that area like no one else.

  The bathroom door opened.

  “Did you make a sandwich for me, too?” Pashie asked from the hall.

  Max looked back at the TV. He had promised Pashie that he would leave everything that had happened four years ago behind him, and he didn’t want to bring those thoughts back up to the surface. Not now. Not when they were heading to the meeting that awaited them today. He slipped his cell phone in his pocket and switched off the TV just before Pashie came around the corner.

  13

  Sarah and Charlie walked through the entrance of the office building on Regeringsgatan. They took the elevator up to the fifth floor and emerged into a reception area that looked like the lobby of a youth center. The walls and the reception counter were painted chalk white, and industrial lamps hung from the ceiling. The strips at the corners of the glass-cube meeting rooms were neon yellow. Young people wearing ripped jeans, plaid shirts, and headphones passed them, and it occurred to Sarah that all that was missing was skateboards.

  “What the hell is this place?” asked Charlie.

  “An incubator—a so-called office hotel. Lots of B2C startups hanging around here and—”

  “Burning risk capital.”

  “Presumably.”

  Outside one of the cubes stood a man in a sports coat who was looking in their direction.

  “There’s Robin Molander,” said Charlie.

  They walked over to h
im.

  “What’s going on at the Ministry of Defence today?” asked Charlie. “Why can’t we meet there? I have a hard time imagining there are any meetings more important than this one.”

  He offered one of his familiar insinuating smiles.

  Robin smiled back.

  “For a meeting like this one, involving external resources, it’s better for us to do it here in the city.”

  “Okay.” Charlie looked into the room. “Shall we get started?”

  They sat down around the conference table and introduced themselves to each other. Robin Molander, the state secretary’s number two, had called the meeting. Two of the other participants were from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs: Elisabeth Vogel, who belonged to the unit promoting arms reduction and nonproliferation, and Kurt Stenman, who led the day-to-day work at the unit for Eastern Europe and central Asia. He was seen as one of the ministry’s most influential people. The fourth and last person was an elderly beauty who turned the heads of all present; she looked as though she had just stepped out of a high-end salon in Sturegallerian. Her name was Anastasia Friedenberga, and the Government Offices had asked her to present the Baltic states’ perspective on the matter.

  Sarah opened the meeting by presenting the information Vektor had gotten about the Russian military exercise in the Barents Sea. She expressed her concern about the submariners trapped at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean and her frustration over Russia’s refusal to accept help from the NATO countries. Then she handed things over to Charlie, who reported on the proposal for a Swedish rescue operation. When they were finished, they invited questions.

  Stenman, of the Eastern Europe unit, raised his hand first.

  “We’ve already discussed the matter in my unit. Of course we should offer the Russians help. But the question of financing is currently unresolved. This is going to be an expensive project.”

  “When we discussed this at Vektor earlier, we talked about how it could be financed,” Charlie broke in. “Maybe we could submit an application for partial funding within the framework of the economic aid expenditures that are a part of our larger commitment to supporting the Russian reform process.”