Ten Swedes Must Die

by Martin Österdahl

  Schiller adjusted his side-parted blond hair.

  “A threat to Swedish national security, then?” he said.

  Carpelan shook his head.

  “It’s too early to say. This could be a case of a so-called rogue. An agent operating on his own initiative. We have chosen not to share this information with other authorities.”

  “That was the right decision,” said Schiller. “I appreciate your caution. I can take care of informing the Swedish Security Service and the armed forces—if and when we determine that that is necessary.”

  Sofia straightened up in her chair and nodded to the state secretary. “A match of this type can provide strong guidance in the investigation, and it may answer some of the questions that have been raised, but at the same time it raises a number of new questions.”

  “Which questions, for example?” asked Schiller.

  “If the suspect is a trained agent, that explains how he managed to get away and make himself invisible, how he was able successfully to adapt Elias Skagerlind’s identification, and how he got into a guard hut at one of our defense facilities.”

  Carpelan’s searching gaze reminded Sofia of what he’d said before the meeting about keeping her doubts to herself. She decided to turn her doubts into questions.

  “However, we need to ask how this can be reconciled with the rest of what’s been established in the investigation up to this point. The killer’s methods, the victims chosen, the possible motives, and certain contradictory details from the crime scenes.”

  “Let’s take them one by one,” said Schiller. “Start with the methods.”

  “We’ve talked about the element of ritual in these deeds. The numerical markings and symbols. Those elements don’t fit with how a government agent works.”

  Schiller furrowed his shapely eyebrows.

  “What’s your point?” he asked.

  Once again Sofia felt her phone vibrating in her pocket. She took it out. Two missed calls. It wasn’t Max who’d called her—it was the crime-scene technician Benjamin Thornéus. He had also sent her a text message.

  Sofia, call me as soon as you can.

  Carpelan glared at her, and Sofia left her phone where it lay on her thigh. She cleared her throat.

  “My point is that one can murder people much more quickly and simply than this. And leave behind fewer clues.”

  “If one doesn’t want to confuse one’s murder investigator,” said Schiller.

  Sofia looked at him, kept her feelings in check with an effort of will.

  “This isn’t the first time a person with military training has used methods intended to mislead the police,” said Schiller. “Western intelligence services don’t use such methods, but others do.”

  “But this is very elaborate,” said Carpelan. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

  Schiller didn’t answer; instead, he glared at Sofia.

  “Okay,” she said. “Let’s assume this Goga is doing things to confuse us. But why the dramatic staging? It’s almost as if he’s trying to perform a story for us. Is it that story that’s supposed to create confusion?”

  “Or what?” said Schiller.

  “Or is it the evidence in the form of fingerprints and DNA that’s there to confuse us? How can someone arrange a crime scene with so much care and still leave behind clues?”

  “We have a match that’s nearly one hundred percent confirmed,” said Schiller. “It is this man; don’t imagine anything different.”

  Carpelan looked uneasily from Sofia to Schiller.

  The cell phone balanced on her thigh began vibrating again. She quickly glanced at the screen. Benjamin Thornéus. The illuminated letters seemed to scream at her. What was so important that he had called her several times and also sent her a text message?

  Carpelan cleared his throat. “Do your people at the Ministry of Justice have anything that could cast a little more light on this?”

  “Perhaps there is a problem with everything we’re seeing?” said Schiller.

  “What do you mean?” said Sofia.

  “Perhaps everything we’re seeing is intended to be confusing?”

  The two men looked at each other, as though they understood where this line of thinking could lead. Sofia felt she was the only one in the room who didn’t. Or was her boss just playing a game with Schiller?

  “We’ve had a Russian track as one of several possible tracks under consideration in this investigation from the beginning,” said Carpelan.

  Yes, and why is that? thought Sofia. She sought to catch Carpelan’s eye and figure out what he might be up to, but he was looking only at the state secretary.

  “I assume I don’t need to underscore the need for continued total confidentiality,” said Schiller. “At a very early stage in the investigation, we received notification of increased Russian aggression here and the arrival of a certain person.”

  Sofia assumed he was referring to the special envoy from Moscow, Papanov, about whom she and Carpelan had spoken at the beginning of the investigation. And the increased security the Russian embassy had requested. But she couldn’t help wondering exactly when Schiller had received this so-called notification. Much earlier than that? She pushed away these thoughts in order to regain control of the discussion.

  “When we examined Callmér and Lindström’s backgrounds to find a common motive for the murders, we didn’t find anything that would have reinforced the Russian track,” she said. “That’s why we’ve been working on several parallel tracks.”

  “Perhaps you need to dig deeper?” said Schiller.

  Sofia wanted to get up and leave. How would this asshole college boy do if he spent a few years on the police force? During the entire meeting, he’d done nothing but humiliate her.

  “We’ll do that, of course,” said Carpelan. “Now that we’ve got a DNA match, we can set the other tracks aside.”

  A new vibration from her cell phone forced Sofia to look down. It was a new text message from Thornéus.

  You have to call me. Bad news.

  What could have happened?

  “The government considers it extremely important to determine whether this really is a man who is a member of a Russian special unit,” said Schiller. “Everything else is of secondary importance. We need to know whether we are dealing with a rogue or an organization so we can determine whether there is a threat to only a few individuals or to us all.”

  66

  In bed afterward, Max could hear Pashie breathing regularly. He switched on the little reading lamp at the head of the bed. A short while ago, she’d been passionate; now she was sleeping deeply. She’d reminded him that she was still mad, but her determination to make an attempt before the most favorable time of the month was over had weighed more heavily than her anger.

  He’d tried to call Charlie before they’d gone to bed, but his phone had been switched off. From the bathroom, Max sent him a text message and asked him to call. He went back into the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed with one hand on Pashie’s hip while he waited for an answer.

  Why would a person have an office behind his closet? Why did he disappear on his own seventieth birthday without informing his closest colleagues?

  It was inconceivable that he would be able to relax right now. Max walked down the stairs to the lower level and called the boxing club.

  “Yes, I’ll still be here for a while,” said Feliz. “Do you want to come by for a session?”

  “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  When Feliz opened the door of the Narva Boxing Club on Frejgatan, he looked at Max suspiciously. He was a head shorter than Max, but he was a former Puerto Rican junior champion and wiry and strong, hard as stone, so their sparring matches tended to be even.

  “You look like you haven’t slept for a few nights.”

  “Is that right?” said Max.

  “You shouldn’t be working out if you’re not sleeping. You know that.”

  “Do you want to fight here in t
he doorway or in the ring?”

  Feliz smiled his warm, broad smile.

  “It’s like that? Put your gloves on. I’ll bring you down to earth.”

  After forty minutes, they were sitting in opposite corners of the ring. Every square centimeter of Max’s body was sore thanks to Feliz’s blows. If there had been point judges, the referee would have been lifting the arm of the pride of San Juan. But what Max lacked in the areas of speed and technique he made up for with his greater reach, his muscle mass, and his thick skull. They were both dripping sweat into pools at their feet.

  “You’re as tough as a damned pine tree, Rospigg.”

  Max laughed. “One more round?”

  Feliz shook his head.

  “One more round, and one of us is going to get hurt for real. What is it I’m fighting tonight?”

  “Didn’t you know any Swedish Coastal Rangers in San Juan?”

  Feliz laughed loudly.

  “I’ve had the Coastal Ranger in the ring here many times. This time it felt like I was fighting a demon. What the hell has gotten into you?”

  Max recalled his conversation with Sofia Karlsson and the professor at the University of Tartu. The demon. Lietuvens, it was called. The demon that tortured human beings and animals at night. That paralyzed them in their sleep.

  He thought of the gene in his paternal line that could cause nerve cells in the frontal lobe to atrophy.

  “You don’t want to know, Feliz.”

  “Okay, as you wish.” Feliz stood up on unsteady legs, walked across the ring, and shook Max’s hand. “Take care of yourself. I’ll see you again soon.”

  Feliz switched off the lights in the old boxing club as Max pulled open the door and stepped out into the darkness of Frejgatan. Max had no strength left in his arms; the door felt almost too heavy to open. He took a deep breath and crossed Norrtullsgatan with slow steps, his legs deadened by lactic acid. When he came alongside the inner courtyard of the Frejgatan assisted living center, he cut across to Surbrunnsgatan and then entered a big inner courtyard surrounded by construction fencing because of an ongoing renovation project.

  He heard quick footsteps behind him, but his hard sparring with Feliz made him slow, and he had time only to perceive a black shadow before a blow from what felt like a large and heavy object sent him to the ground.

  His cheek and mouth were bloody and full of gravel. Black figures danced around him. And then he felt himself bouncing off the asphalt because of the kicks landing on his body. It was only then that the pain came.

  Max managed to turn himself over so he was lying on his back. With his face to the sky. The stars were bright and clear as they are only in August. It was hard to breathe.

  He laid his palms against the ground and pushed himself up, thought he could glimpse the dark backs of people running away. He heard the sound of screeching brakes from a car that stopped right next to him, so close that Max thought he could reach out a hand and touch it. Instead he fell back to the ground.

  The car door flew open. Agitated voices.

  Then everything around him disappeared.

  67

  Sofia could still feel Schiller’s gaze on her as she sat down in one of the little booths they used when they wanted to make calls in private.

  “I’m out on Ingarö,” said Thornéus. “The fire department was here first, responding to a call about a burning summerhouse. They let it burn down. Then they called the police. They tried to call you first; then they spoke to one of your colleagues, who said you were busy but would no doubt want to have me out there. As soon as I got here, I tried to call you because I thought you’d want to know first.”

  “Shit, don’t tell me we have another one.”

  Sofia had felt uneasy ever since she’d seen those missed calls.

  “We have a badly burned body. It was soaked with gasoline before it was set on fire.”

  “Good Lord,” said Sofia. “The same markings?”

  “Yes. The skin is fire damaged, but looking at the forehead I could see that someone carved the number seven next to something that looks like a sun. Just to be sure, in case we missed the markings on the body, the perpetrator put up a sun in the form of a burning bicycle wheel on the gatepost. Next to the gate is a mailbox he decorated with a seven. I hardly think we’re going to have to wait for technical analysis to be sure our murderer has struck again.”

  “What’s the dead man’s name, do you know?”

  “The man hasn’t been identified. The surname on the mailbox is Wass.”

  Örebro, January 1946

  Ozols awakened to the sound of doors opening. A big German shepherd bounded in. The barking was so loud that it echoed in the hospital ward. Before he knew what was going on, the room was crawling with black-clad policemen. Three of them suddenly appeared at his bedside.

  He sat up calmly and looked one of them in the eye.

  It’s time. To the valley of the shadow of death. I feel no fear.

  Around him other men in black took hold of his brothers’ arms and legs and dragged them out. Ozols set his feet on the floor and stood up. His legs were still unsteady, but some of his strength had returned.

  “Will you lead the way?” he said to them.

  Though they did not speak his language, they understood what his words meant, and they began walking out of the Örebro field hospital together—Ozols in the middle, surrounded by a human wall of six men. Because Ozols, in contrast to the others, did not resist, they let him walk freely and retain his dignity.

  Out in the courtyard, he saw the doctors—the ones who’d promised they would not be handed over—standing in a row. Next to them stood the head nurse, Wass, who had executed all of the orders that came down from the men of power in Stockholm. Ozols spat on the ground in front of them.

  At the end of the row closest to Ozols stood Anna. Her face was twisted in a grimace Ozols knew he would never forget. She was not the only nurse who was crying, but her tears seemed to have hollowed her out. He nodded to her.

  Be strong. We’ll see each other again.

  The leader of the black-clad policemen counted the prisoners before they were dragged onto the buses. Ozols could tell by the look on the man’s face that something wasn’t right. Ozols looked around, counting to himself and murmuring the names of his brothers. Then he followed the policeman’s searching gaze.

  On the other side of the barbed wire was the provisional burial ground the Swedes had created for them. There stood the narrow, crooked bone-white crosses that marked the places where some of his brothers, the ones who had died during the hunger strike, had been laid to rest.

  A creaking sound came from the cemetery. Two black-clad men were standing near a piece of wood that lay on the ground. One of the men lifted up the piece of wood, while the other reached down with one hand and pulled Normunds out of the pit underneath. Normunds’s body was shaking. He looked more like an animal than a human being.

  Ozols thought of the terrible trauma Normunds had experienced during his flight to Sweden. And of the promise he’d made to him after the others had gone their separate ways: They won’t take us alive.

  Normunds had told Ozols that he didn’t intend to go along to Russia. He’d said he’d heard stories of what happened to the men who were not strong enough to handle life in the penal camps, the ones who were referred to as “gone,” who wandered around in the daytime wearing only underwear in the Arctic winter, who went back behind the garbage cans and looked for rats or old fish heads they could suck on. Normunds refused to become one of them.

  When Ozols saw him hanging from the strong arms of the Swedish policemen, he understood that Normunds had already become one of them. Here in Sweden. Because of his treatment in the Swedish camps.

  The policemen dragged Normunds toward the waiting buses. He pulled out something he had stuck to the inside of his shirtsleeve. A flash of reflected sunlight struck Ozols when the sharp fragment of a broken mirror caught the winter sun.

&
nbsp; The policeman behind Normunds caught sight of the object immediately and grabbed his wrist, squeezing the mirror shard out of his hand.

  Ozols seized his chance when the policemen around him looked away, toward Normunds. He rushed from the bus, hurried over to his countryman. He surprised the policeman holding the shard, knocking him to the ground. The other policeman let go of Normunds to pull out his nightstick but had no time to free it before Ozols knocked him down as well.

  Ozols laid one hand against Normunds’s cheek and looked him in the eye. Normunds, whose whole body was shaking, closed his eyes and nodded.

  Do it.

  With his free hand, Ozols set the mirror shard against Normunds’s carotid artery, and at the moment a policeman seized him, he pushed the shard into Normunds’s throat until the blood pumped out of him and reddened the snow on the ground.

  FRIDAY,

  AUGUST 18

  68

  White smoke curled up to the dawn sky from a pile of gray ash. Sofia had climbed over what was left of the bare house foundation and examined what had once been a family’s summerhouse but had now been transformed into something else. Her colleagues, the people walking back and forth between various parts of the building, the police cars, and the white tent the technicians had set up called it a crime scene. She was standing out on the road by the gate and observing it all from a distance. To her it didn’t look like a crime scene. It looked like an ancient crematorium.

  Carpelan stepped out of a car and started walking over to her. From the rear of the same car emerged the state secretary of the Ministry of Justice, Tomas Schiller.

  “How are you doing?” Carpelan said when he reached her.

  “I’m doing okay,” said Sofia. “The Wass family, not so much.”

  “What the hell is this supposed to be?” Carpelan pointed at the bicycle wheel attached to the gatepost next to them.

  “That’s a bicycle wheel. Twenty-six inches, I’d guess.”

  Carpelan shivered in the mild August morning.