Under Water (Anton Modin Book 3)

by Anders Jallai

  UNDER WATER

  A Thriller by

  Anders Jallai

  UNDER WATER

  Copyright © 2015 by Anders Jallai. All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author or publisher.

  Contents

  Begin Reading UNDER WATER

  CONTACT THE AUTHOR

  ALSO BY ANDERS JALLAI

  “An aura of controversy and mystery still clings to the tragedy of the M/S Estonia. Multiple theories about the cause have also been fueled by numerous questions about the credibility of the official investigation, which the Estonian, Finnish, and Swedish authorities published in 1997.”*

  (Failure Analysis of the Estonia, American Society for Metals, ASM)

  * * *

  *This is an actual statement Anders Jallai discovered while researching the Anton Modin novel series Deep State, Enemy of the State, and Under Water. All italic text in the beginning of the novel’s chapters is taken from actual documents, newspapers or statements.

  CHAPTER 1

  GRISSLEHAMN, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 1994

  It was early morning. The sea was moving gently as if it was asleep. The air was filled with the tang of seaweed. A calm, friendly, and ordinary day seemed to lie ahead, and Anton Modin did not have a worry in the world except for the pike he was hoping to cook that evening. It was still nibbling when his son Alexander ran out onto the pier with his fishing tackle. The old pike should know better.

  Alexander had dug up his own worms for bait and kept them in an old can. He tied the hook and cast the line. The pike bit instantly.

  “Dad! Dad, come quickly!”

  Alexander felt the tugging on the line and began to reel it in. The end of his fishing rod was bent toward the water in an awkward angle. The line trembled like a taut violin string. He had never felt such power coming from the deep. Drops of water splashed on the green surface. Five sleepy ducks quacked away from the reeds on the other side.

  Alexander kept such a tight grip on the bamboo rod that his knuckles whitened.

  “The hook must have got tangled in the bottom weeds,” laughed his sister Ellinor, two years his junior. “Ha, ha, ha. Come on!”

  “Da-a-ad! Come here!” Alexander pulled and twisted the rod, almost falling off the pier and into the water in the process.

  Ellinor watched her brother’s struggles and rolled her eyes. She was holding onto a doll, dressed in pink, which she put gently onto her crossed legs. She was talking more to the doll than to her brother.

  “You’re always exaggerating, Alexander,” she said.

  “No, I swear. I’ve caught a fish!”

  “What is it now?” Modin called out from the house he and Monica had built together in this perfect spot at the shore of an inlet near Grisslehamn.

  “Alexander’s hook got stuck in the weeds,” Ellinor said, stroking her doll’s head.

  “I’m coming,” Modin said with a smile on his lips.

  At that moment, Alexander fell into the water headfirst. He vanished under the surface.

  “Let go of the rod!” Modin yelled and kicked off his leather clogs.

  Ellinor got up and stared. Only Alexander’s hands, still gripping the rod tightly, were sticking out of the water. They were plowing a channel toward the mouth of the inlet.

  “What in the name of… Let go of the rod, Alexander!”

  “Let go of the rod,” whispered Ellinor with a lump in her throat.

  Alexander was being carried out of the inlet, his head still under water. Modin dove in. The water formed a wall. He swam toward his son, still yelling at the top of his lungs: “Alexander! Let go of the rod, damn it!”

  Alexander’s head emerged from the water. He was gasping for air.

  Modin seized hold of him.

  “Darn, Alexander, you should have…”

  “That was a big one,” Alexander coughed.

  Monica was standing on the pier, holding on to Ellinor, the girl’s arms tightly wrapped around her mother’s legs. Monica’s eyes were begging her husband to bring home her boy. But she was smiling and there was no sign of stress in her voice.

  “Alexander, my boy,” she said. “What are you doing? Are you trying to commit suicide?”

  “I caught a big fish. Can we get the boat?”

  Modin lifted his son up onto the pier. Though still gasping for air, the boy was determined. He pointed into the distance. “Out there!” He couldn’t help seeing movements in the water.

  Monica now hugged him. “You’re crazy, sweetheart. It’s too big for you.”

  “So the hook got stuck in the weeds, right?” Alexander said to his sister between fits of coughing.

  Modin climbed up onto the pier, soaking wet and furious.

  “Leave him alone, Anton,” Monica said. “He’s only a child.”

  “He’s crazy. One of these days, it’ll be the death of him.”

  “He’s only seven.”

  “I know,” Modin said, pulling off his wet sweater and jeans. He stared at his son who now had a very sheepish look on his face.

  “Sorry, dad.”

  “Never mind. We’ll take the boat,” he sighed. “It must be huge.”

  All four of them rowed out. They were in luck. They picked up the rod with the catch on the other end. That evening, they ate pike with sour cream, chives, and mashed potatoes.

  The low sun came in through the windows. Two days to go before their trip with the M/S Estonia, a car and passenger ferry operating between Stockholm and Tallinn, the Estonian capital. The ferry offered restaurants, movies, live performances, and tax free shops—great for a family outing far out on the Baltic Sea.

  Chris Loklinth, Modin’s boss at the Department of Special Operations DSO, had suggested that on this business trip, Anton take his family along. “It’ll look better that way,” was the way he put it. “No one would suspect a 28-year-old father of two.”

  Modin bought the tickets. The costs were covered by the American government, because this assignment was one of many that were carried out in cooperation with the CIA.

  “What a fun little vacation,” Monica said. “You arranged that nicely.”

  She cast him a glance, one that trapped his attention and captured his eyes for a moment. They smiled over the heads of their children.

  Monica patted her son on the head. The blond fringe had dried by now, but his hair was poking in all different directions. She bent over him and sniffed. Alexander giggled.

  Modin poured more beer into his wife’s glass, contemplating whether he should tell her that this was a business trip. He had been neglecting his family for quite some time now—planning the Estonian assignment with the Americans had dragged out far longer than anyone anticipated, and taking his family on a semi-vacation was a the perfect way to make up for his neglect. Particularly since the tickets wouldn’t cost him a penny.

  He reasoned that she didn’t need to worry about all of this. Nor did he. Things would be just fine.

  He took a hefty bite of the braised pike on his plate. It struck him that this was a big fish, a fish that had managed to evade capture for a long time—only to finally be caught by a little boy.

  “When do we get back?” Alexander asked.

  “We’re taking the ferry back on September 28. Then we can go fishing.

  “Me too,” said Ellinor.

  “Yo
u too.”

  Modin glanced at his children, then at Monica; she had that smile on her lips that made him long for the night. Monica lowered her gaze and continued eating. Her hair was glistening in the evening sun. He looked out over the inlet, then further out over the sea, far away toward the horizon. The water was changing color in a way he had rarely seen. The ducks hadn’t returned. He would have plenty of time to think about all of this later.

  Not now. He was happy.

  CHAPTER 2

  FIFTEEN YEARS LATER

  GRISSLEHAMN, FRIDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2009

  He came walking with long agile strides over the snow-covered crest of the gravel track. First, his head emerged, then his shoulders and chest, and as he reached the top, his whole body. He was walking with a determination that could be felt right up to Anton Modin’s kitchen table.

  This was the third day in a row.

  The stranger seemed familiar somehow, but Modin couldn’t quite place him. He radiated nothing but negative vibes. Modin decided to ignore him as long as he stayed on the road and kept off his property.

  This wasn’t easy. There wasn’t much else to concentrate on. What was this lonely man doing in Grisslehamn a week before Christmas?

  The stranger was alone. Deep creases at the corners of his mouth gave the impression that he had not talked to anyone for days. He was neatly dressed, which seemed to indicate that he was neither an artist nor some employee on sick leave, which were the two most common reasons to be near the snow-tormented east coast of Sweden near the Sea of Åland this time of year.

  He was mysterious. This could spell danger.

  Anton Modin had a sixth sense for danger. For the better part of 25 years, ever since Chris Loklinth, the head of Military Intelligence Special Operations, a Swedish secret service unit, recruited him, he had been trained to search for and find enemies. His experiences had left an indelible mark on his nervous system. Any slight deviation from the norm, even the tiniest breach of the routine would alert him.

  Modin’s eyes widened as he looked at the man’s receding silhouette. Modin’s breathing was short and synchronized with his heartbeat, and his muscles were tense. He was ready for a fight, even though he was still wearing his pajamas and bathrobe.

  The suspicious-looking man disappeared behind a gloomy green hedge.

  Everything was now still in Modin’s field of vision. The frosty lawn outside his window glittered, the leaf trees, normally yellow until late autumn, were bare, and the dark of the evergreens loomed beyond. The ice would soon become permanent. The Sea of Åland would freeze over once every ten years or so. Modin felt that such a winter was approaching. Cold, dry, and silent. Even the coastal sounds—the waves, the seagulls and the ducks—would be muffled, gone.

  The tense energy that had surrounded the figure of the wanderer was gone. Modin breathed a sigh of relief and the adrenalin level in his body sank.

  I’m not going to have to leap into action, he thought. He’s harmless. The guy has issues of his own. Nothing to do with me.

  Trying to calm down, Modin imagined that the stranger was likely the new caretaker at his neighbor’s house. Nothing to worry about.

  Modin forced himself not to go and check whether the piles of documents on the dining table in the main room had remained untouched, and he managed not to rush through the house and peek through every window checking for footprints in the snow.

  It’s over. He won’t return.

  It took an act of willpower to raise his morning coffee cup to his lips, and get going. The wounds had healed. If his will was strong, his body would offer no resistance. His hand did not tremble. He drank from the cup, filled it up again with hot coffee from the coffee machine, and sat down to the breakfast he had prepared for himself. With his left hand, he browsed through this morning’s issue of Norrtelje News, the local newspaper for Grisslehamn, as well as the town of Norrtelje itself. He skimmed the articles without any further thoughts about the man.

  The third page featured a picture of the hotel near Grisslehamn harbor, which, according to the article, had a new owner. Modin sat up straight and attempted to read the entire article but soon gave up. His cat, Miss Mona, jumped up onto the table. She crept in under the pages of the newspaper and nudged him. He stroked her back as he tried to continue to read the paper without risking that Miss Mona would rip the pages to shreds. He startled when he saw an article about the M/S Estonia. He smoothed out the newspaper, took a sip of coffee, then carefully replaced the cup on its saucer.

  The article had been written by Matti Svensson. Why the fuck is he writing about the Estonia? What does he know! Modin pressed his lips together.

  His children’s rooms on the upper floor remained untouched. His best friend, Bill Bergman, had suggested he clear them out, had even offered to help, and encouraged him to move on.

  Not yet. He wasn’t ready.

  When in his own bedroom, he would convince himself that Monica’s smell still lingered in her bathrobe, which hung next to his in the closet. He smelled the sleeve and closed his eyes.

  There she was!

  He put the cat down on the floor. The headline screamed out at him:

  NO NEW DIVINGS AT THE M/S ESTONIA. THE GOVERNMENT REJECTS THE FAMILIES APPLICATION FOR A NEW INVESTIGATION.

  In his article, Svensson wrote that the course of events leading to the vessel’s sinking had been established. Modin scanned the article. It described how giant waves threw open the bow visor, which had been hinged at the top of the vessel. Then the car ramp fell down, forcing the bow visor to stay open, which resulted in a twelve feet wide gap. In the raging seas, the car deck of the M/S Estonia rapidly filled with thousands of tons of water. The vessel, which at the time had had more than 1,000 passengers on board, listed and sank within half an hour. All the conspiracy theories surrounding the disaster had since been declared unfounded, Svensson wrote, citing the Minister of Defense. For that reason, no new diving operations to the wreck of the M/S Estonia would be allowed. The vessel would be declared a communal grave. The loss of the M/S Estonia was a tragic accident, not a mysterious and potentially sinister plot, the article said.

  For fuck’s sake! Modin put down the newspaper. Everything involving the M/S Estonia is mysterious and potentially sinister. The surviving members of the crew mysteriously vanished. The ban on diving was issued almost immediately. All this was orchestrated by Special Ops with the blessing of the Prime Minister at the time. The public just doesn’t know the twist and turns. Matti Svensson, who writes nothing but sheer platitudes, is no exception.

  Modin rubbed his hands together. No one talks about the military goods and the Soviet technology on board. But he knew that this was more than a rumor spread by conspiracy theorists—he had read about the smuggling of these items in the Special Ops archive.

  His stomach dropped and he broke into a cold sweat. More than fifteen years had passed, but his personal trauma was as powerful in his mind as if it had happened yesterday. It was his fault. Why had he brought his family with him? They had had no chance. He, an experienced diver in the best years of his life, had survived, while his wife and two small children stayed behind down in the deep.

  God Almighty. Yes, the bow visor had loosened, that much had been proven beyond reasonable doubt—it lay there separately on the sea bed. But how could the vehicle ramp, which was inside the vessel, have slipped down and forward into the oncoming waves? Why were the crew members on the car deck in the first place? It just didn’t add up.

  I’ve got to get hold of a crew member, or one of the officers on board, Modin thought as he threw the newspaper aside, got up on what were now wobbly legs, and went into the main room to get his breath back. Stacks of papers and books were piled in one big heap on the dining room tale. This was his M/S Estonia research.

  What am I missing?

  Modin drew the palms of his hands backwards over the temples of his crew cut. He rubbed his eyes with his knuckles and a few warm tears stuck to the back
of his hands.

  The investigation into the shipwreck had not been able to explain why things happened so fast. Several experts had noticed this, as had the majority of the victims’ family members.

  He felt the house getting warm. He had lit the wood stove as he did every morning in winter. Wearing his white bathrobe and his Birkenstock clogs, he went to the porch and looked over the inlet.

  Modin didn’t regret the fact that he had quit working for Special Ops after the M/S Estonia had capsized in September1994. He resigned in protest against Chris Loklinth’s decision not to share the secret report on the M/S Estonia wreck with him. To Modin, it was clear that this accident had not been properly investigated. Not by a long shot. In fact, the investigation could even have been manipulated.

  “Anton Modin is far too emotionally involved,” Loklinth had said to his colleagues, as Modin learned later on. “He lost his family on the vessel. Sharing information with him would simply be too risky.”

  I need to get my hands on that fifteen-year-old report, Modin thought, resting his hot forehead against the cool windowpane. First, I will get special permission to dive down to the wreck; after all as Special Ops promised me last summer. Fuck! I was so close. I solved the mystery of Prime Minister Olof Palme’s murder, uncovered the cover-up, but of course, none of this was ever to become public. Several people had to die to cover up the cover-up yet again. A high price to pay for a box full of secret documents.

  Loklinth had made the documents top secret for 70 years into the future and forced him to swear an oath of secrecy, in exchange for a dive down to the M/S Estonia.

  How much is Loklinth’s word worth? He still hasn’t arranged that permission for me to dive. They claimed that Estonian authorities caused the delay. Right. And I’ve not seen one red cent of the reward, either. Fifty million Swedish crowns, a hefty eight million dollars, for solving Palme’s murder—or rather, for my silence about it.