Ten Swedes Must Die

by Martin Österdahl

  On the morning when the prisoners had finally been allowed to move freely for the first time since the hunger strike, Anna was chosen to represent Lucia in the field hospital’s Saint Lucia’s Day celebration.

  The Balts had sat in the pews of the church with expressionless faces and emaciated bodies. A last anointment before they were to be slaughtered in the name of peace. Vanyka, Vanya, and Uncle Vanya were variants of the nickname they used for Russians, Bolsheviks, and communists. The Balts all seemed to agree that they would rather end up with Velu Mate, the ruler of the realm of the dead in Baltic folk mythology, than in the Russian work camps, where their sentence would be to continue working until their bodies gave up.

  From a couple of the boxes next to the desk, Max dug out documents from the Baltic Foundation’s archives, which he compared with facts he’d found in the books. Maj-Lis Toom had come to Sweden on September 29, 1944, after having crossed the Baltic Sea on a smugglers’ boat called the Triin. Max looked at the photograph of the boat. Everyone who’d boarded the Triin had had to show documents to the deputy harbormaster in Tallinn. But the period leading up to the Triin’s last voyage, before the Soviet Union had closed an impenetrable ring around the Baltics, had been chaotic, and the administrators had lost control. In desperation, refugees had thrown themselves into the sea and caught up with the boat, grabbing ropes hanging from it and climbing aboard. No one knew for certain who had arrived and who might have fallen overboard.

  The refugees were in very poor condition when they reached Österhamn on Arholma after three days at sea with strong winds. A storm had driven the ship far to the north before the winds abated and the smugglers’ boat had been able to make its way south toward its destination. The rough weather had made them lose twenty-four hours.

  But Maj-Lis had lost more than that. The record from the refugee processing center on Arholma indicated that Maj-Lis was a young woman who had gone from “a hysterical to a catatonic state” after having lost her son and husband on the voyage. She had received special care in a temporary camp outside Norrtälje. Efforts had been made to acquire information about Anton and Taniel. But they had produced no results. No one had any information about the son and husband who had fallen overboard. Maj-Lis had no relatives in Sweden.

  A text message interrupted Max. He reached for his cell phone and opened the message. From an unknown sender.

  I’d like to apologize again for yesterday. We need to meet and discuss the result of your blood test. Can you come in by yourself Thursday morning at 9:10? Regards, Dr. Axelsson.

  “Max, do you want anything?” Pashie called from the kitchen.

  He sent a quick ok and then turned to the doorway.

  “No, thanks. I’ll fix myself something later.”

  Hours passed. In the book Det stora svenska sveket, Max found a picture of the Triin. When he saw the ship’s sail, he started. His palms felt sweaty. He looked at his left hand, saw that it had started trembling again.

  Pashie came into the library and stood in front of the desk. She was wearing her black-and-red robe.

  “What are you reading?” she asked.

  “I’m looking over documents that have to do with Maj-Lis. Her flight across the Baltic. The police have asked me to find out more about her background.”

  Pashie nodded. Her gaze settled on Max’s hand. He laid it in his lap.

  “Are you coming up soon?” she asked.

  “In a little while. I need to take a shower, get this out of my system.”

  “Sounds like a good idea,” said Pashie. “See you up there.”

  After Pashie had gone upstairs, Max compared the picture of the Triin with the one in the archives of the Baltic Foundation. It was the same boat, but there was one difference.

  On the photo in the book Det stora svenska sveket, he could see that the boat bore a symbol depicting a Viking ship with a swastika on its sail.

  “Maj-Lis Toom had nothing to do with Nazis.” That was what he’d said.

  Sofia had talked about neo-Nazis, but that was a red herring. She was on the wrong track.

  An organization that had evacuated Estonian Swedes from Tallinn in the forties had used this symbol. An organization created as the result of an agreement between the Swedish government and Nazi Germany. Approved by Heinrich Himmler personally.

  It was called the Odal defense organization.

  Max took out his cell phone. His call went through. Answer, Sofia.

  He swore when it went to voice mail.

  39

  The children were at a movie with Carmen, Sarah’s cleaner, who’d been given extra responsibilities two evenings a week. Björn, her eldest, was wild about going to movies. Nothing made him happier than running into a theater with a bucket of popcorn in his hands.

  One day last spring, Björn had come home from school and asked her what a think tank was, exactly. The children in his class had been given an assignment that involved describing their parents’ work. Björn’s class had just finished talking about the Middle Ages in history. Sarah had told him that people who wanted to work on developing social improvements during the Middle Ages had entered cloisters. These days, people worked with lobbyists or in think tanks instead, she had explained.

  “So you’re a kind of nun?” Björn had said.

  Well, maybe so, she’d thought. But no one had told her that being the head of a think tank would be associated with a life of celibacy.

  She smiled at the memory, at herself and her smart son. Adults, too, had to be able to daydream sometimes. When her colleagues had left for the day, there was nothing she would rather do than take a five-year-old named Añejados from a desk drawer and set him on fire. It didn’t bother her that the Cuban was no bigger than 178 by 47 millimeters; in fact, he was just the right size. She knew what Charlie and the property administrator and all the other bastards thought about it. And she didn’t give a damn what the Swedish health authorities had to say about the matter. All that just made the cigar taste better.

  She was sitting on the windowsill with the window open. Dusk was falling on the world around Valhallavägen. Parents were emerging from buses and cars, holding their children’s hands; young mothers were pushing baby carriages and pulling older children along behind them. Soccer clothes, lunchboxes. Cars driving recklessly toward the last parking spaces on the street. Old people slowly walking home from the Fältöversten shopping center. There were also those who remained on the park benches with plastic bags between their knees and an open bottle in one hand.

  In the Warsaw of her childhood, she had lived on what she could find on the streets. That wasn’t really very different from how these people on the benches lived. Except in one respect, and that was what made all the difference in the world. Freedom. The freedom to do as they pleased. The freedom to choose their own mistakes.

  The freedom to have sex with women and smoke cigars without any bastard getting in one’s way: that was the point of life. It wasn’t any more complicated than that.

  The shocking developments of the last few days had left lingering effects on both her head and her back. As though the Kursk and the sudden death of Torbjörn Lindström hadn’t been enough, Lisette had called her. She wanted to meet the children.

  Sarah pulled her knees up closer, thought of her conversation with Pashie, woman to woman. Different, but nevertheless alike in many ways. It was hard to shake off the sorrowful look in Pashie’s eyes. It wasn’t easy to get close to Pashie. Perhaps there were a lot of reasons for that. People didn’t need to be similar to be friends. People certainly didn’t need to be similar to be lovers. Pashie and Max were living proof of that. Would they manage to have a normal Swedish life together? Be man and wife? Mother and father? Time would tell. They had problems now—that was for sure. Was Max again getting into something that would end up swallowing him completely?

  August, she thought. What is it about the month of August?

  She took out her cell phone, read the text from Lisett
e again. Lisette wanted the whole family to meet in the city and have lunch.

  What have I got to lose? she thought, and sent off her reply. It would have to be in the Tyresö Centrum shopping mall, near the children’s school.

  She pushed away her cell phone, took a drag on her cigar, and returned her attention to the world outside.

  The green light on her desk phone started blinking. After business hours, the phones at Vektor were silent. Who could be calling her this late?

  “I tried you at home first,” said Charlie. “But no one answered there. So you’re still at work?”

  “Taking a little quality time for myself.”

  Sarah crushed her cigar into the heavy crystal ashtray, a present from Max. “Has something happened?”

  “The Pentagon has issued a press release,” said Charlie. “One of the two American submarines that was spying on the Kursk did not establish radio contact with the American armed forces headquarters at the scheduled time.”

  Sarah closed her eyes. She remembered what Pashie had said before this morning’s meeting had ended. “There are two submarines lying on the bottom of the sea, not just one.”

  “What do you think that means?”

  “I don’t know, but I find it disturbing that speculations about a collision causing the sinking of the Kursk are becoming more and more common.”

  “Casus belli,” said Sarah. “Fine words you and your buddies use.”

  She hoped Charlie would open up a little when she threw in “your buddies.” She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about how he’d maintained such secrecy surrounding his private relationships. Particularly the one with Anastasia Friedenberga.

  Charlie laughed.

  “There’s something I’d like to talk to you about,” he continued. “I didn’t think the meeting was the right time, but…this business with the Centrs shopping center in Latvia that you looked at about a week ago. What actually happened there? Did I miss something?”

  Sarah felt herself becoming irritated. Charlie had changed the subject.

  “The shopping center in Riga?” she said. “There was an explosion. Right at peak shopping time.”

  “Did anybody die?”

  “I think somebody did die, and many people were injured, most of whom were Russians. Almost all the people who live in that part of town are Russians. There was a Norwegian woman among those injured—that’s probably why it’s gotten so much attention here.”

  “Has anyone been arrested in connection with the bombing?”

  “No. Moscow’s interpretation is the usual one. Extremist nationalists who want to harm the Russian population. The Latvian newspapers are claiming the opposite. That Russia caused the explosion so it could claim that the Russian population is in danger, so they have a reason to move their positions forward. That was what she—the woman at the meeting—was suggesting, wasn’t it?”

  “Anastasia?” said Charlie. “That could be.”

  “Who is she, actually?”

  He fell silent again. Then he said, “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you about it some other time.”

  Charlie really didn’t want to talk about it. His voice sounded sorrowful, which was unusual.

  “Is everything all right?” asked Sarah.

  “We should study what happened in Riga,” he replied. “We need to know more. What type of explosion was it? What theories are the police working with? Do they have a prime suspect?”

  Sarah shook her head. Charlie had evaded her invitation to tell her about what seemed to be weighing on him. It was obvious he didn’t want to talk about Anastasia. Not now, anyway.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll see what I can find out.”

  40

  “What do they have?”

  Sofia nodded at the pile of tabloids on the desk between them. It was past ten thirty in the evening. It was clear from looking into Carpelan’s eyes that his day had been as long as hers. And it wasn’t over yet.

  “Everything we have, except one thing. And a little more.” Carpelan grimaced, half in resignation, half in anger. “I know you don’t read the boulevard papers, but I don’t have that luxury.”

  “One of many reasons I don’t want your job.”

  “That’s too bad, because it might be available soon. You’d get an extra four thousand a month.”

  “Before or after taxes?”

  Carpelan laughed.

  Even in the worst possible situations, you must be able to laugh. Otherwise you would never manage to overcome life’s challenges. Her father had taught her that. When you’re up to your neck in shit, there’s nothing you can do but sing.

  “Can I get a brief summary?” she asked.

  “Everyone knows that Torbjörn Lindström, the Defence Ministry’s state secretary, has been murdered. A serial killer with political motives is on the loose in Stockholm. The police are helpless. Damn it, it couldn’t be any worse than this, Sofia.”

  “What they don’t have is our third victim, Maj-Lis Toom, right?”

  “Right, they don’t have that—yet. We have to get to the bottom of her case.”

  “Are you trying to be funny?”

  Carpelan smiled tiredly when he realized how what he’d said must have sounded.

  He sighed. “Pretty good one, right?”

  He shifted in his chair, leaned over the desk. “Maj-Lis was number ten. Callmér number nine. Lindström number eight. What does that suggest to you?”

  “It will be a while before we can get this confirmed, but I think Maj-Lis was lying there in the water for some time. I think she was the first victim.”

  “So the first victim was marked with the number ten?” said Carpelan.

  Sofia nodded. “We have to deviate from our usual way of thinking. If Maj-Lis had just somehow happened to get in the way, she wouldn’t have been dealt with like this.”

  Carpelan took a deep breath. “So the killer we’re looking for is following a certain order. And Maj-Lis’s murder is a part of it.”

  “That he started with her, of all people, is a part of the story he wants to tell,” said Sofia.

  “And how many acts does this story have?”

  “He’s counting down from ten,” said Sofia. “He’s serving us his message piecemeal so we won’t understand the whole picture until he’s done.”

  Carpelan shook his head. “So depending on whether he stops at one or zero, we have seven or eight lives to save? And we have no idea whose turn is next? How are we going to protect people if we don’t know who they are?”

  “This is the dilemma of terrorism,” said Sofia.

  Carpelan pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose. “As long as we don’t grasp his logic, we’re grasping at straws. We have to understand the logic.”

  “Could it have something to do with Russia after all?” asked Sofia. “You suggested that yourself. You noted that Torbjörn Lindström was murdered at Berga, where he was supposed to discuss the Kursk disaster. Callmér had a long career behind him in which he’d made a name for himself as a critic of the Soviet Union and Russia. Maj-Lis Toom was once a refugee fleeing from the Soviets.”

  “I don’t believe anything. But I know this is bigger than anything else we’ve worked on. If we fail in our hunt for this killer, we’re both going to lose our jobs.”

  “Max Anger has agreed to help with the investigation.”

  Carpelan nodded. “Good. But let’s not tell the Swedish Security Service or Schiller. At least not yet.”

  “That’s your headache. I’m just planning on doing what’s necessary to break the case.”

  Someone laughed on the other side of the door. Not everyone had gone home.

  “How did it go with The Lion King?” asked Sofia.

  “Do you realize what those tickets cost? What do the theaters in London think a simple policeman in Sweden makes?”

  “It’s criminal.” Sofia stood up. “I’m going to go and have a look at that Identi-Kit picture. I’ll see if our
guest, Öberg, the leader of Fourteen Rising, recognizes him.”

  “Good. See to it that the Identi-Kit picture gets sent out with a nationwide alert. We have to find out whether Mr. John is the killer or just a loser who sold the ID to someone else. But, Sofia?”

  She stopped in the doorway.

  “The skinhead, Öberg, is probably not guilty of anything except possibly illegal weapons possession. I don’t know if I can get the prosecutor to bring a charge against him because of that old pistol, but I’ll give it a try so we can at least keep him here a little while longer. That might look good in view of what the newspapers are speculating.”

  As long as there was speculation in the newspapers, they needed to show that they were doing something. She nodded.

  On her way out of Carpelan’s office, she saw that she’d missed a call from Max Anger.

  41

  Pashie locked the bathroom door behind her. Max had just stepped out of the shower and was standing with his back to her, a towel around his waist. After his hours at the desk, his shoulders and neck looked as hard and stiff as the decorative beach pebbles set into the wall of the tile-covered shower.

  He turned to face her. Pashie’s hands were on the door handle behind her back.

  “What is it?” asked Max.

  “I know what you did for me at the meeting this afternoon.”

  Max put his hands on her hips, pulled her toward him. “It’s the right priority right now, focusing on the families. Anyway, I should be the one saying thanks.”

  “Is that right?” Pashie’s fingers played with the hair around his navel and wandered up to his chest. “You never came up to the bedroom last night.”

  Her hands wandered back down. Took hold of the knot in the towel.