Ten Swedes Must Die

by Martin Österdahl

  “Raimonds Cilpa. Rebeka Meija.”

  The paper had faded over the years. At the top of it there appeared to be an address.

  Why had this slip of paper lain under Maj-Lis’s bed, together with the bracelet?

  Her death had not yet been reported in the media. Perhaps it never would be? She hadn’t been a powerful person in Swedish society. Maj-Lis’s death was not interesting.

  When he came up from underground at the city hall subway station, he took out his cell phone and called Sarah.

  “How did it go with getting Berga started up again?” he asked.

  “Straight to hell,” said Sarah. “Sweden is pulling out of the Kursk matter. I just heard a report that the head of the CIA, George Tenet, interrupted a meeting in Bulgaria to travel to Moscow. Lord knows what’s going to happen next.”

  Max shook his head. “What does Charlie say?”

  “In the wake of the meeting with Robin Molander, we’ve canceled our so-called high state of readiness. Charlie is probably at home pouting in his garden, disappointed over not having been able to prove his courage, like the matador in Ferdinand. I’ve found out that the vessel transporting the British and Norwegians from Aberdeen to the Kursk via Trondheim is called the Seaway Eagle. The shipping line is Straume Shipping. Do you know anything about them?”

  “Did you say Straume Shipping?” asked Max.

  “Yes, that’s what I’ve come up with.”

  “Might be a coincidence, but Hein Espen comes from a town in western Norway called Straume.”

  “So that could be his new business?”

  “Let me check on it.”

  “Okay. Are you coming in later?”

  “I’m on my way to the police now; I’ve worked my way through nonfiction room one at the public library and called various university departments. I think I’ve made some progress with the symbols.”

  “Pashie’s doing great things here. She’s already succeeded in collecting over five hundred thousand kronor for WoRM. In one workday. If Vektor ends up wearing a halo as a result of this submarine disaster, it will be thanks to her.”

  Max found himself smiling as he pulled open the door of the police building. It couldn’t be a coincidence. He took out his cell phone again, punched in the number, was immediately connected to the answering machine.

  “Hi, this is Hein Espen. Please leave a message after the beep.”

  It was nice that some kind of therapy or good advice had finally led to a positive result for Hein Espen. It had been clear to everyone who had known him that Hein Espen, the Royal Norwegian Navy’s best diver before his accident, would not be able to go back to diving after his sick leave. It was equally clear that he would not be able to change careers completely. He needed to be beneath the surface. Or in a position where he would lead others who worked beneath it.

  Now Max understood why, of all people, Hein Espen had been the first to call him after the disaster had occurred and why he hadn’t wanted to say where he’d been working. As an independent contractor, he had no doubt gotten involved with the Norwegian navy as soon as the Kursk had struck the seafloor.

  Max decided to send him a text message.

  Straume Shipping! Who do you think you’re fooling? Good luck. Get in touch again when you can. Max.

  Max heard a throat being cleared and looked up. Sofia was standing in front of him.

  “Good afternoon,” said Max, putting the phone in his pocket.

  “Afternoon?” said Sofia, glancing at the big white wall clock behind the guard at the reception desk. “Most people would probably call it evening.”

  Sofia spoke to the guard and was given a visitor’s badge that Max attached to his jacket. In the elevator, on the way up to the open-plan offices of the National Bureau of Investigation’s homicide division, Sofia nodded at him.

  “I checked up on the Odal defense organization about which you called. Thanks for a lesson in Swedish history. What else have you come up with?”

  “A journal called Sign Systems Journal, which is published by the Department of Semiotics at the University of Tartu in Estonia. I’ve booked a conference call with their department head for tonight. I think she can help us with your symbols.”

  “Okay, good. Anything else?” asked Sofia.

  “This. It was lying under the SS bracelet in Maj-Lis’s house.”

  Sofia took the slip of paper with raised eyebrows. “Are you withholding evidence from me?”

  “That wasn’t my intention. This slip of paper was stuck in the bracelet. I put it in my pocket and more or less forgot about it. In the upper right-hand corner is an address that’s barely visible anymore. The first letter in the second row of the address has been rubbed off, but I’d bet it said Riga there, that the slip refers to an address in Riga.”

  Sofia nodded. “We’ve received information that it is extremely likely that the bracelet belonged to a Latvian legionary who fought for the Nazis during the Second World War. And now a slip of paper referring to an address in Riga? Both objects were found in the home of an elderly woman. This may have no significance, Max, and I’m really not an expert, but isn’t it the wrong country that keeps showing up in what’s connected to Maj-Lis Toom? Latvia? Wasn’t she an Estonian Swede?”

  “There were legionaries all over the Baltics. The Latvians were viewed as the most loyal. They were taking care of the harbor in Tallinn, which Maj-Lis and her family fled from. And I would think it would have been Latvian legionaries who would have run the activities of the Odal defense organization on-site. Incorruptible, dedicated.”

  “Who was allowed to flee Estonia?” asked Sofia.

  “People who could prove they had at least twenty-five percent Swedish blood were given the Odal defense organization’s membership card, which anyone leaving occupied Estonia was required to have.”

  “Why just the descendants of Swedes?”

  “The Swedish government was in close contact with the Germans; they made all kinds of agreements. Also, the Nazis viewed Swedes positively; they were considered a racially pure, Aryan people. The agreement reached in this case was that the descendants of Swedes would be allowed to flee if Swedish liquor was supplied to the German soldiers.”

  He looked at Sofia, who was shaking her head.

  “The activity of the Odal defense organization in Tallinn has been described as the hunt for every drop of Swedish blood.”

  50

  Pashie was sitting at the little kitchen table with a cup of coffee in her hand. She hadn’t tasted it yet. She was thinking of everything she’d sacrificed, of all the guidelines she’d been following. Weight gain. Vigorous exercise—regular, but not too intense; she must not wear herself out or strain her body too much. Four hundred milligrams of folic acid every day. The hormones she was taking had made her own body stop producing hormones. Pashie hated smelling her own sweat. Hated the moods that drove Max away from her and made her ask herself who she really was.

  That afternoon, while she was still at work, she’d gotten preliminary results of the latest tests. It was as she’d feared. Exposure to the cold and the severe infections she’d suffered had damaged her uterus. The too-high dose of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medicine used to treat her at the medical clinic in Saint Petersburg had only exacerbated the damage. But it could have been worse. In the medical sense, she was now, according to Dr. Axelsson, subfertile. Her ability to become pregnant had been degraded, but she was not infertile.

  What else could she do? She had gone to a shaman. She had booked time at healing sessions and acupuncture treatments, taken nutritional supplements prescribed by a Chinese doctor, tried Ayurveda, homeopathy, various kinds of dietary advice, and natural medicine. Her free time and her savings were all going to this.

  All you have to do is come home, Max.

  Pashie looked at the clock again. She thought back on their fruitless encounter the previous night. First the anticipatory tiptoeing around Max while he’d sat buried in his books in the s
tudy. Then what had happened in the bathroom. Max couldn’t have misunderstood her message. Last night would have been the golden opportunity. Today they were in overtime, and the overtime was passing quickly. It was five to eight, and he hadn’t been in touch.

  Where in the hell are you?

  She thought she knew the answer to her own question, what it was that was keeping him busy. They’d made promises to each other, and this wasn’t the first time Pashie had felt that those promises conflicted. She had promised him she wouldn’t stand in his way. He had promised he wouldn’t stand in her way. At the same time, they had promised each other they would put what had happened in the past behind them and start over from zero.

  We have promised each other something that is impossible.

  She looked at her phone. The screen showed that she had gotten a text message. She picked it up and got ready for one of Max’s excuses. But it wasn’t from Max.

  You haven’t changed your mind? I still have the table. Gondolen 8:30.

  She went and stood in front of the hall mirror. Sent a quick text to Max asking when he would be coming home. Then she looked at herself. Her own gaze. Knew there was no point in waiting.

  She went back to the message she’d received.

  OK, she wrote, pressing the phone’s small buttons with her thumb.

  She lifted her coat off the coat tree, pushed down the door handle, and left.

  51

  They walked along a corridor, past a number of desks belonging to some of the officers who made up Sweden’s national homicide unit. Sofia did not introduce Max to any of the people who glanced at them as they passed by. After walking about ten meters, she stopped, pressed her ID card against a reader, and opened the door of a meeting room. On the table lay a laptop computer, a desk telephone, and a few folders containing documents.

  “We book rooms by the hour here,” said Sofia. “Like the seedy hotels in the city.”

  Max walked past her and into the room, pulled out a chair, and sat down. He turned toward Sofia just as she was taking off her brown leather jacket. When she stretched to hang it up, her bare belly was exposed. She looked Max in the eye and tucked in her T-shirt.

  Max gave her the telephone number for the university department in Estonia.

  “Her name is Marju Bohl.”

  “Okay. I’ll call her,” Sofia said and sat down.

  She pushed the speakerphone to the middle of the table.

  “Hello. This is Marju Bohl,” a woman said in English.

  “Professor, this is Sofia Karlsson of the police in Stockholm calling you as agreed.” Sofia spoke flawless English with an American accent. “I understand you are one of Europe’s most prominent symbology experts. I need your help with a current investigation. Do you have access to a computer you could use to open e-mail?”

  “Yes,” said Marju Bohl. “Why do you ask?”

  “I would like to send you some pictures, if it’s all right with you. But I must warn you that the images are disturbing.”

  Marju Bohl gave Sofia her e-mail address, and Sofia sent the pictures.

  “Do you have them?” she asked after a while.

  “I’m opening them now,” said Marju.

  Max and Sofia heard her gasp.

  “We haven’t been able to find much about the symbols,” said Sofia.

  “They are unusual,” Marju said after a period of silence. “You might find your answer in a book called The Emblem in Scandinavia and the Baltic. The book identifies similarities and differences between symbols in our various cultures. I know they have it at Stockholm University.”

  “Okay. Thanks. I’ll have a colleague get it,” said Sofia. “What can you tell me about the pictures I sent you?”

  “They are not easy to interpret, particularly in light of the brutal way they’ve been executed. But it’s fairly clear to me which group they belong to. Originally they were religious symbols, but I would not think they were intended as religious references in this situation—it is probably more correct to call them nationalist. They are extremely unusual and very old.”

  “Have you seen them on human bodies before?”

  “I have heard about them being used in tattoos. What we are dealing with are symbols that come from a mishmash of old religions in the countries around the east coast of the Baltic and in parts of what is today Poland and Belarus. They are surely derived from Romuva or Dievturiba. What in everyday language one could call various forms of Baltic paganism.”

  “Does anyone practice these old religions today?”

  “The old paganism has not died out in this part of the world. It is still actively practiced, particularly in Latvia and Lithuania. There are also practitioners in other parts of the world where there are large immigrant groups, not least in the United States.”

  “What characterizes these religious communities?”

  “Nostalgia and a love of nature. A belief in magical and mystical forces in forests and waters and in the elements of the sun, the wind, the earth.”

  Sofia again made a note in her notebook.

  “What can you tell me about the markings on the bodies, if we look at them one by one?” she asked.

  “In the first picture I downloaded, we have an ugunskrusts, a thunder cross, at the base of the neck. It represents the Baltic god of thunder and lightning, Perkons. He rides across the heavens and strikes the sun so that it weeps. He also fights the devil and other evil beings. His symbol, the thunder cross, is the swastika, and this one can be dated to very far back in time, long before Adolf Hitler chose it as his symbol. Before the Second World War, the swastika was popular in the Latvian republic. In Latvian culture it is very seldom associated with Nazism.”

  Marju fell silent. Max and Sofia could hear her typing.

  “But there’s one thing that’s odd.”

  “What’s that?” asked Sofia.

  “This variant of the swastika must be extremely difficult to carve into human skin. The picture suggests extraordinary concentration and dedication.”

  “Okay. And the other symbol?” asked Sofia.

  “The man with what looks like a reversed C under his Adam’s apple. That is a symbol many men have worn on clothes and on the hilts of swords, ever since the Iron Age, to protect both warriors and orphans. It is the sign of the moon god Meness. The moon god Meness and the sun goddess Saule were husband and wife. But according to myth, Meness fell in love with Ausrine, a female incarnation of the morning star. Perkons punished Meness for his infidelity by dividing him in half.”

  Sofia sent Max a meaningful glance. Now they seemed to be getting somewhere. The murderer had divided Claes Callmér’s body in half, just as the old thunder god had divided the moon god in half. His Adam’s apple was decorated with the reversed C. Like the moon god Meness, Callmér had been unfaithful to his wife.

  “And the third?” asked Sofia.

  “The wave-shaped symbol that was carved into the woman is the symbol of Mara. Mara is Mother Earth, the mother of all, the ruler of all matter and all elements. She is strongly associated with childbirth; children are said to come into the world through the gates of Mara. She is the protector of women and, in particular, the protector of mothers and children. Also often associated with the sea.”

  “To sum up: They are all symbols of Baltic gods?” said Sofia.

  “Yes, absolutely, without a doubt,” Marju replied.

  “Have these symbols been used in a political context in recent history?”

  “Not any of these, as far as I know, but other symbols from the same folk belief systems have been used for political purposes. The symbol of the morning star, the eight-pointed star, has become the symbol of the third nationalist awakening in Latvia. A variant of it is called Lietuvens’s cross. It has become a popular tattoo among certain young men in Latvia. Lietuvens is the closest one gets to an equivalent of the devil in the Christian belief system. A demon that tortures human beings and animals at night. That paralyzes them in their sle
ep.”

  “What is the third national awakening?” asked Sofia.

  “Romantic nationalism that grew strong among the Latvian population after the Singing Revolution, which is what led to the declaration of independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. There are extremist versions of it.”

  “We have extremist movements on this side of the Baltic, too,” said Sofia. “Do you know whether these symbols have ever been carved into dead bodies before?”

  “I have never before heard of that happening. In my view, it is very odd, as both Baltic mythology and the pagan congregations are basically very peaceful and lack the evil beings that are found in almost all other religions.”

  “And when did you see these symbols being used in tattoos?” asked Sofia.

  “It was quite recently, in fact. That’s one reason I was surprised when I saw what you had sent me.”

  Sofia looked up from her notes, her brow furrowed. Max walked around the table and crouched down next to her.

  “Quite recently?” said Sofia. “When, exactly?”

  “Last week. Two men from DISS, Latvia’s anti-terror unit, came to see me here at the university.”

  Sofia looked at Max and shook her head. Do you understand? He signaled that she should keep asking.

  “Was that about a different investigation?” she asked.

  “Yes, it was. They didn’t look very happy. But maybe that’s not so strange given what happened at the Centrs shopping mall.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Sofia.

  “Professor, this is Max Anger, Sofia’s colleague, speaking.” He leaned over Sofia’s shoulder. “Do you have the name of the police officer who was asking about those symbols?”

  “His name was Ludmars Kaldenis. I’ll see whether I have his number somewhere.”

  “That won’t be necessary, thank you. We have the number for DISS,” said Max.

  After Sofia had thanked the professor and ended the call, she looked at Max with wide eyes.