Ten Swedes Must Die

by Martin Österdahl

Charlie caressed her back, pulled her gently toward him.

  “Perhaps it’s not too late for a reunion?”

  Charlie smiled, but Anastasia didn’t smile back. She lay down, rested her head on his chest.

  “Things don’t always turn out the way we imagine they will, Charlie.”

  “That you came here is evidence that you’re wrong. This is exactly what I imagined.”

  “I saw that suitcase in your closet—you hadn’t closed the door properly. When are you leaving?”

  “Soon,” he said. He told her about his plans.

  “So you’re going up there, to hell?”

  Charlie knew his secrets were safe with Anastasia. She had reminded him of that during their lunch at the Operakällaren.

  “I won’t be gone long,” he said.

  “But why? What is it you think you can accomplish?”

  Charlie just caressed her cheek.

  “Do your colleagues know what you’re planning?”

  “No. They’ll be disappointed but not surprised when they realize I’ve chosen to go away. I haven’t exactly made a secret of the fact that I’m not looking forward to turning seventy.”

  “Seventy isn’t as bad as you think. There’s still plenty of energy in you,” said Anastasia, lying down on top of him again.

  57

  Kandinsky stopped the car at a bus stop on Ingarö, outside Stockholm. When he finished his call, he pulled down the sun visor and flipped up the cover of the little mirror mounted on it. He traced his sculpted eyebrows with a finger, studied the way his wig sat on his head, and lightly touched the cream that hid the tattoo around his neck.

  He smiled when he saw his reflection. He was a different man now.

  He’d felt no irritation when he’d received the new information. Rather, the new plan had filled him with even greater strength and satisfaction. Now he would begin the next phase of the plan. The terror would spread to entirely new levels.

  The uniform he needed was in secure storage in the cabin he was using as a base. He would not need to make a long detour to pick it up. He was looking forward to putting on the durable gray wool material with the emblems and markings that specified rank, competence, and experience. The feeling was titillating. He had to continue, undeterred, without resting, until the police caught up with him.

  He took out the book of maps of the Nordic region he had in the glove compartment, flipped to the page he wanted, and calculated the distance.

  It would take nine and a half hours to drive to Trondheim.

  There wasn’t a minute to lose.

  58

  Dr. Rutger Axelsson removed the blood-pressure sleeve from Max’s left arm.

  Max rubbed his bicep.

  “You have high blood pressure. Has that always been the case?” asked Axelsson, typing on his keyboard.

  “I haven’t been checking my blood pressure regularly.”

  “Okay.” The doctor went on typing for a little while and then turned around. “We need to talk about this business with the benzodiazepines.”

  “It’s been more than a year since I last took them. You can’t have found any traces of them in my blood.”

  “That’s true, I haven’t,” said Axelsson. “How has getting off of them affected you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you notice any difference in your behavior when you’re not taking them?”

  Max rolled down his shirtsleeves.

  “No.”

  “And people in your environment? The people closest to you? Would they say the same thing if I asked them?”

  Max shifted on his chair. He’d disliked the red-haired doctor and his condescending attitude and silly bushy sideburns from the start. He was insensitive, he tended to ramble, and he always seemed to be talking about the wrong things.

  “Both of us know why we’re sitting here,” said Max. “What the hell do the benzodiazepines have to do with that?”

  “Aggressiveness, coldness, a certain tendency toward suspiciousness and meanness?”

  Coldness? Meanness? thought Max. Pashie had gotten home later than Max last night. The smell her breath had left on the pillow revealed that she’d been drinking. In the morning, he’d kissed her on the forehead and gotten out of bed carefully to avoid waking her.

  “Is that something Pashie has said?”

  The doctor shook his head.

  “When the two of you are here together, we talk openly. What you and I talk about is protected by doctor-patient confidentiality. I don’t discuss what one person says about another. What I’m asking about has to do with why this medicine was prescribed for you in the first place. Alprazolam is a powerful drug.”

  “And what have you found in the test results that has given us a reason to be talking about this?” asked Max. “Do you want to know what traumatic experiences I’ve had? Is that going to help Pashie get pregnant?”

  “Is that going to help us with achieving pregnancy, you mean?”

  The doctor gave him one of those looks that was both narcissistic and reprimanding.

  “No, it isn’t going to,” he went on. “And I am not a psychiatrist; I’m not interested in your traumatic experiences. When we analyzed your blood sample, we found an anomaly we need to talk about.”

  Max felt a stabbing sensation in his chest.

  “An anomaly?”

  “You are predisposed to develop a congenital disease. And this could have been discovered earlier. In fact, it should have been discovered earlier, given your background as an elite naval officer who has undergone extensive testing. I’m asking about the alprazolam because I’m wondering if early, discrete symptoms of the disease, like unease and anxiety, led a doctor to prescribe you benzodiazepines.”

  “Do you mean our family doctor in Norrtälje would have prescribed the drug without informing me of my genetic predisposition?”

  Max laid his right hand over his shaking left hand.

  “That would be a very strange thing for a physician to do. But there is a great deal in your background and your medical history that is unusual.”

  “Let’s confine ourselves to the present,” said Max.

  “Okay. You have high blood pressure, which could be a symptom. Have you felt different recently? Increasing unease or anxiety?”

  His left hand had stopped shaking. Max wiped his sweaty palm off on his trousers.

  “You indicated on your health declaration that your father died young,” the doctor continued. “May I ask whether he took his own life?”

  “No, he did not.”

  “Did he ever talk about an illness?”

  The dizziness was back.

  “My father died in an automobile accident. Because no crime was suspected, no autopsy was done.”

  “Seen from a medical point of view, that’s unfortunate, because if an autopsy had been done, we could know for certain,” said Axelsson. “Many people choose to hide symptoms with the aid of alcohol or anxiety-reducing drugs. As it progresses and addiction sets in, sometimes patients choose to end their own lives.”

  “My father did not kill himself, Doctor. Can you get that into your head, or shall I help you with that?”

  The doctor’s eyes widened, and Max raised a hand in an apologetic gesture.

  “Did you and your father see the same doctor?”

  Max had to think about that. The doctor in Norrtälje, who had prescribed the benzodiazepines the first time, was the one his father, Jakob, had gone to—that was true. When Max had been to see him five years ago, the doctor had been in his last year before retirement.

  Max nodded. “What is the condition I’m genetically predisposed to?”

  “You are predisposed to develop so-called frontal lobe dementia. This is a mutation with varying degrees of penetration, which is to say that not everyone will develop the actual disease, but it can still be passed on to the next generation. If you develop the disease, you should be aware that some of history’s greatest leaders—Roosevel
t, Kekkonen, Stalin—have suffered from dementia. It doesn’t have to mean the end.”

  The sweat and the dizziness suddenly vanished. Max’s breaths felt light, short.

  “And if I develop the disease?”

  “Nerve cells atrophy, usually in the frontal lobe, sometimes in the temporal lobes. In contrast to Alzheimer’s, memory and the capacity to learn are not affected. But the personality changes. Concentration, judgment, impulse control. One feels emotionally blunted but is subject to sudden attacks of rage. The ability to feel empathy gradually degrades. Late in the course of the disease, one’s face can become stiff, and one’s speaking ability often suffers.”

  “When does one usually notice whether the disease is developing?”

  “It often makes its debut in middle age; it is difficult to detect because it is often mistaken for depression.”

  “I have to think about this.”

  Max held on to his chair when he stood up.

  “I have no obligation to inform Pashie that you have this genetic predisposition, but I would recommend that you discuss it with her because you are trying to have children.”

  Max turned toward the doorway.

  “I’ll do that.”

  59

  Max walked along Valhallavägen from Sophiahemmet Hospital to Vektor, thinking about his conversation with Dr. Axelsson.

  His paternal grandmother was a Russian who had been married against her will. A woman who had lived a double life between Carl Borgenstierna and her husband, a Russian spy called the Goose, who in turn shared everything in his life with Stalin, women not excepted. An infamous leader whose once shining intellect was twisted by dementia, making him incapable of empathy and constantly suspicious of everyone around him.

  In his mind, he replayed the scene in the hangar outside Saint Petersburg where he’d saved Pashie from the Goose’s prison pit. The words the old man had said just before Max had pulled the trigger came back to him.

  “I recognize the fire in your eyes. The power skipped a generation.”

  The health declaration. The field he’d had a hard time filling in.

  Paternal grandfather: unknown.

  By the time he passed the Royal College of Music, his temples were throbbing with each step he took along the pavement.

  You don’t have time for these thoughts right now.

  He stopped walking and took his cell phone from his pocket. Pashie hadn’t been in touch. Perhaps she was still asleep? He sent her a text message. Will I see you at the office?

  Not more than a few seconds passed before the answer came back. Staying home today. Will meet you at the car when it’s time to go to Charlie’s.

  Max sat down in front of his laptop at Vektor and tried to shake off his brooding thoughts. In his inbox was a message Sofia Karlsson had forwarded containing background information on the Galerija Centrs bombing; she’d received it from one of her colleagues in the National Bureau of Investigation’s international department.

  The Centrs was in Riga’s medieval core. It had been renovated after Latvia gained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 and was the most popular shopping center in the city. It housed a number of restaurants and bars and a modern fitness center. On the bottom level of the five-story building was a supermarket, and outside that was a post office. It was there, among the packages, that the two bombs had exploded just after five o’clock in the afternoon, when the supermarket was full of customers.

  The police’s pictures indicated extensive destruction. Walls and shelves loaded with food had crashed to the floor, and the ensuing fire had turned the supermarket’s inventory into melted and charred lumps. Max saw people with blood on their faces and despair in their eyes carrying and dragging victims who had suffered burns, cuts, and broken arms and legs. According to the local police, the bombing might have been perpetrated by local gangsters fighting over turf, but there was also evidence suggesting a political motive. The attack was one of a series of such attacks carried out in the Baltic countries since they’d gained their independence from the Soviet Union. Latvian newspapers wrote that it was the worst event in the country since 1991. One person had been killed and thirty-three injured, many of them seriously. It was being called a terrorist attack, but no group had yet been identified as likely to have been behind the bombing. All questions journalists asked the police about whether Russia or any ultranationalist groups were involved were met with the same answer: “No comment.”

  Marju Bohl, the professor at the University of Tartu, had said that Ludmars Kaldenis of DISS, who was investigating the Centrs bombings, had called her and asked about a man with tattoos representing the symbols of the old Baltic gods. Tattoos that looked like the ones found on the victims of the killer in Sweden. Elias Skagerlind had said that the man at the Cage Bar had always worn something around his neck. Could he have had such a tattoo? Could the man the police were searching for in Riga be in Sweden now?

  60

  Sarah had chosen the newly opened Italian restaurant Mare-Monte Il Forno in the Tyresö Centrum shopping center. She had picked up the children from school early and made sure she was here before Lisette arrived. Lisette would have to come up and greet them, not the other way around.

  The children’s lunch break was early in the day, and they were the first guests. All three of them were sitting in a leather-upholstered booth, chewing on Italian breadsticks. Between chews, Björn and Lisa glanced at each other, and Sarah feared she might have made her biggest mistake yet in their lifetimes. What traces was this experience going to leave behind in their young brains? A divorce didn’t need to be the decisive disaster some people made it out to be. Up to this point, though, the way she and Lisette had handled their divorce and their shared responsibility for the children had been disastrous. If nothing else, she could console herself tonight—when she was celebrating Charlie Knutsson’s seventieth birthday with her friends and colleagues—with the thought that she had at least tried to be a good and reasonable adult today, that she had managed to find the goodness in herself to grant Lisette’s wish. That she had tried to forgive and move on. For the sake of the children. How Lisette Hansen would behave remained to be seen. If she actually showed up.

  A bell chimed as the front door of the restaurant opened, and Sarah turned toward the entrance a little too quickly, just as she had done the other two times she’d heard the bell. But this time Lisette was standing there.

  She had replaced her usual work suit with a khaki jumpsuit. High brown boots, leather bracelets around her wrists. She was holding cloth bags on which peacocks were embroidered. She had let her hair grow, and it was held back in a ponytail. Her face and arms were darker, the color of the stamped earth she now called her home.

  Everything that had seemed so incomprehensible about their past together was now self-evident. Sarah felt as if she’d been stabbed in the stomach with a razor-sharp knife. The feelings were still there, despite everything, despite the years that had passed.

  Lisette approached them, smiling.

  “Mama, is that Lisette?” asked Lisa.

  Sarah nodded and took her hand.

  “Yes, it is. That’s Lisette.”

  Björn, who was sitting at the edge of the booth, jumped down and went over to her. Something started bubbling in Sarah. She had to look away when Björn put his arms around Lisette’s waist and hugged her.

  Sarah was sitting next to Lisette in the booth. The children were on the other side of the booth. They had poked at their lasagna a little. Lisette had told the children about her life in Africa. Then she had wanted to know all about how things were going at school.

  There was the sound of a ringtone, and Lisette took a cell phone from her pocket. She looked at it quickly and then laid it on the table with the screen down. She smiled apologetically at Sarah.

  Was that the big-game hunter? thought Sarah. Her dude? Or was it a friend in Stockholm? An ex-friend-in-common? Another woman? She realized she hardly knew anything about
Lisette anymore, and the feeling that washed over her was as unexpected as it was contradictory: I don’t have the right to ask questions like that. Nevertheless, there was nothing she would rather have done than turn that cell phone over and look through the contacts and most recent calls.

  She looked at her watch.

  “The children have to be back at school in fifteen minutes,” she said.

  “I understand,” said Lisette. She turned to the children. “Time to open your presents.”

  Lisa’s cloth bag contained a dress featuring a pattern of moons and water waves. Lisa held it up in front of her, and to Sarah’s astonishment it looked like a perfect fit. There was another present in the bag, Lisette told Lisa. Lisa reached into it with her little arm and pulled out a handmade drum painted yellow and brown.

  “That was made by girls outside Windhoek. They use Styrofoam and newspaper they find on the streets; they wet it, press it together, and shape it like that. Then they paint it. They’re no older than you are, Lisa.”

  Lisa smiled dreamily. Windhoek. Sarah thought it must sound like Nangijala to Lisa, a land of adventure. Lisa touched the drum cautiously, as though it were made of the thinnest glass. She tapped her fingers on the stretched skin on top. Laughed when she heard the sound.

  Out of his bag Björn took a vest and matching bow tie in black, white, and gray that was alternately striped and checked. On both the vest and the bow tie, there was a green flower stalk with cerise flower petals. Björn immediately put the bow tie on, jumped down onto the restaurant floor, and began staggering forward with his hand in front of him as if he were holding an invisible cane. “I’m an old man…,” he said in a shaky voice, and Lisa started laughing as she always did when he put on an act.

  Lisette looked at Sarah, smiling. Sarah took a deep breath and looked at her watch again.

  “There should be one more thing in the bag,” said Lisette.

  Björn came back to the table and dug around at the bottom of the bag. He pulled out an African mask with yellow eyes, a blue nose, and a red mouth. Around it hung folded threads that looked like serpents in all the colors of the rainbow.