Under Water (Anton Modin Book 3)

by Anders Jallai

  Bergman tried to stare down the American but didn’t succeed. Bill Falkirk glanced at the bar. He turned back his gaze, sharper than ever and with painful focus.

  “We’re under time pressure. We want you to dive in March at the latest. Soon a cable that will be running near the wreck will be installed. We don’t want any interruptions. You will have to help us.”

  “I don’t know,” Bergman said as he glanced over at the bubbling liquid the embassy man had ordered—a Coke. “I don’t know if I can get a team of suitable divers together by then. Modin isn’t in good shape, and I don’t have any other divers lined up. And besides, March is still midwinter over here, you must know that. This makes the whole operation far more dangerous. “

  Bergman was irritated at Falkirk’s self-assured attitude. I suppose that’s how you become when you are working for the most powerful organization in the world, Bergman mused. I’m only a tool.

  “What is the problem with Modin?” Falkirk said.

  “He drinks. That’s all he’s done since he returned from Estonia.”

  “I think that problem can be solved. Here, take this. It’s to be injected. See that Modin gets it.” He gave Bergman a small brown box.

  “What is this? A miracle cure?” Bergman was curious, amused, annoyed, and alarmed at the same time. “He’s an alcoholic. You can’t just cure that overnight.” Bergman put the little brown wooden box in his inside pocket without opening it.

  “That depends on how he’s become an alcoholic,” Falkirk said with a smile.

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean? You become an alcoholic when you drink to much.”

  “Right. As you know, Bergman, we can fix quite a lot of things. This is one of those things. You remember last summer, no doubt, when we brought back your daughter? We’ll do anything for our friends.” He stressed the word ‘friends’ and continued talking in a confidential manner. “Modin was drugged in Estonia. This drug,” he pointed at the pocket where Bergman had put the little brown box, “is the antidote. It will cure him. I promise. Just start the preparations for the dive. We’ll set the date and let you know.”

  “You’ll set the date?”

  “ Yes. Do you have a problem with that?”

  He did, but he was not about to say so. “No, as long as I have enough advance notice.”

  “Of course.”

  “What kind of resources will you provide?”

  “We’ll soon be bringing a submarine into the Northern Baltic Sea. That will help you to get down to the diving area. I’m no expert in these matters, but our naval guys know what to do,” Falkirk said, took a gulp of his soft drink, and smothered a burp with the back of his hand.

  “Easy for you to say. Do you know the temperature during March? We have to dive in ice water. No warmer than 35 degrees.”

  “That’s cold alright. But I’m confident you’ll handle this, because you’re the very best. That’s why we’re sitting here, Bill.”

  He smiled and raised his eyebrows.

  Two girls in their twenties walked by. They were endowed with large racks and enveloped in a cloud of musk. It was impossible to ignore them.

  “I love your sexy blondes over here,” Falkirk said, while his eyes could not determine which breast to focus on. “Swedish women are a treat.”

  “I will have to find one more diver,” Bergman said, ignoring Falkirk’s comments. “Even if Modin can be fixed, as you say, and is on board. That could take a while.”

  “There are three of you, am I right? Including the cop.”

  “John Axman. Yes, he’s one of the best, but he’s abroad right now. I need to find a replacement for him.”

  “So, get another diver. We trust you. It’s important to the U.S., and to Sweden. No one wants the secrets of the M/S Estonia to be revealed, right?” Falkirk stared into Bergman’s doubting eyes.

  “The M/S Estonia? That’s what we’re diving for? I should have figured that out. What kind of secrets are we talking about?”

  “Glad you asked,” Falkirk said. “That means that the secret is still a secret. Let’s keep it that way, for Sweden’s sake. The fewer who know, the better.”

  Hell, Bergman thought. But before he could protest, Falkirk stood up to leave.

  “I’ll convey the results of this meeting to the Naval Attaché. We’re counting on you, Bergman. It’ll be the dive of the century. Too bad nobody can ever know about it.” With a strangely gentle yet threatening final glance at Bergman, Falkirk was out the door.

  CHAPTER 70

  BASTUGATAN, STOCKHOLM, SUNDAY, JANUARY 17

  “On the eleventh of October (fourteen days after the accident) the government submits a report that confirms the difficulties in retrieving the corpses. The Swedish Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson sets up an M/S Estonia group. By now, it is fairly clear that the bodies will never be brought home.”

  (The Girlfriend, Eva Franckell)

  Bill Bergman was driving aggressively and beeped his horn at some idiot who seemed to be asleep at the wheel when the lights changed to green. He had been lying awake all night, thinking about his conversation with Falkirk. Now he was tired, irritable, and confused.

  Falkirk had suggested that it was Sweden who had most to gain from keeping the secret of the M/S Estonia, whatever that secret might be. Bergman was not one who usually subscribed to conspiracy theories—that was Modin’s thing—but many experts suspected that the direct cause of the disaster was a hole that had been blown into the hull of the vessel below the waterline. This would certainly explain the total ban on diving, because if Sweden had a hand in the alleged explosion, clearly the government would want to keep this from the national and international community. There were few wrecks in the world, if any, with such a strict and total ban on diving. But what was it that the U.S. Navy wanted to bring up from the wreck? And why so many years after the disaster? Cargo? A particular corpse? Someone who shouldn’t have been on board, perhaps similar to the secret ninth passenger on the Swedish DC-3 that crashed in 1952? An American intelligence officer had been aboard that plane, which clearly proved that Sweden was engaged in secret cooperation with U.S. Intelligence at the time, directly contradicting Sweden’s supposed neutrality during the Cold War. Both Bergman and Modin, who had dived down to the wreck of the plane, had sworn never to reveal the passenger’s name or nationality. He’d been a parachutist, an American nobody who had caused the Swedish establishment to lie for over sixty years! Just to keep alive the national lie claiming Swedish neutrality. So, for the sake of national security, the dive back then ended up to be a cover-up to hide the covert cooperation between Sweden and NATO once and for all. So many people had died because of all this. The journalist Cats Falk, Admiral Carl Algernon, Prime Minister Olof Palme, the crew of the DC-3, and, no doubt, another dozen or so people. A high price to keep a lie alive, he thought and wondered what lie they were supposed to preserve now. He stepped on the gas.

  He took a left exit off the main road, and headed toward the island of Muskö. Hårsfjärden Bay, which lay right off the island, had been the starting point for the most comprehensive submarine hunt during the Cold War in 1982. For two weeks, the Swedish Navy was on a submarine hunt with mines and depth charges against an unknown enemy. In the end, Sweden allowed the crippled submarine to slip away through the minefield in the southern part of the Stockholm archipelago. Officially, the submarine’s nationality remained unknown. But Bergman figured that it was a Los Angeles-class sub from the U.S. or a British Porpoise Class. This is what cover-ups were all about: NATO submarines.

  I’d bet my life that they are still regularly patrolling our littoral waters to this day, Bergman thought.

  He drove into the tunnel passing under Mysingen Bay. This tunnel had been constructed for defensive purposes, so that a potential enemy would not be able to cut off the secret underground naval base on Muskö Island from the mainland.

  The tunnel was narrow and damp and curved slightly uphill for a good while. When Be
rgman reached the other side, his ears popped.

  It had started snowing. The road was covered with a layer of chalk-white powdered snow. He turned to the left at the next intersection. There was nobody around. January in the archipelago could be a lonely place, almost spooky, especially when the sky was overcast. It was so very dark and silent out here.

  He headed for the southern part of the island, checking his rear view mirror a few times. Earlier he had had the impression that a Saab was following him out of Stockholm, but the car did not reappear after the tunnel.

  Finally, he reached the sea. The surface was not yet iced over, even though the air temperature had hovered around only 15 degrees for almost a month. He could see waves splashing up around the southern tip of Muskö Island. The Baltic countries were far away on the horizon, and even further south was Poland.

  Jöran Järv, Modin’s colleague from Special Ops, had given him good directions. In his head, Bergman reviewed the tough negotiations he suspected were ahead when trying to convince Jöran Järv to join a potentially lethal dive down to the M/S Estonia.

  CHAPTER 71

  MUSKÖ ISLAND, SUNDAY, JANUARY 17

  Bergman swerved to the right and turned onto a dirt road that would take him all the way out to the cottage. It was difficult to drive there, but as luck would have it, he had four-wheel drive, which was certainly an asset in the winter. He could see the cottage through the snow-laden trees.

  The 1970s style brownish cottage was sitting on a small knoll out there on a peninsula with the roaring Baltic Sea beyond. He turned off the engine and remained seated. He could even hear the sea from inside the car. It was thundering against the rocks below. Somewhere around here the NATO submarine nearly sank with all hands on board in October 1982. That could have meant the deaths of some 200 U.S. sailors, cooks, divers, intelligence experts, and whoever else was on board.

  The cottage door opened and Bergman woke up out of his Cold War reflections. This must be Jöran, he thought, and jumped out of the car.

  Jöran Järv was around forty-five, looked fit, and, despite his graying temples, seemed boyish somehow. Of average height, maybe five feet ten or so, he looked rather military: upright posture, straight nose, high cheek bones, and broad, well-trained shoulders.

  He waved to Bergman to come in.

  Jöran Järv put on some coffee, then sat down on a slightly worn couch in one corner of the main room. The wood stove was burning. The cottage only had one level, except for the basement, which had been blasted out of the bedrock. A bomb shelter, as Jöran Järv explained.

  Jöran had stopped working for Special Ops in the mid-1990s, about a year after Modin. He had been reassigned to a desk job at Berga Naval Base. That was after a nasty experience during a covert operation in the Baltics, when Special Ops hung him out to dry in the media, which claimed he was a secret agent. Special Ops had removed its protective hand and did not lift one finger to clear his name. Granted, what he had been doing was illegal, but he had done it in the name of national security.

  “So, what happened?” Bergman asked, pushing half a gingerbread biscuit into his mouth. It stuck to his teeth and he tried to dislodge it with his tongue as he listened.

  “Well, I had a consultancy firm, a kind of store front for all the secret and semi-illegal things I did for Special Ops. This time my assignment was to buy surplus equipment from the Soviet military after the collapse of the Soviet Union. We’re talking about secret military products such as aircraft radar, sighting equipment, and chemical and biological weaponry. There were even midget subs on the shopping list.”

  “What did Special Ops need all that for? The Soviet Union no longer existed.”

  “We wanted to be one step ahead should there be a military coup in Russia or some other form of non-parliamentary takeover. In the beginning of the 1990s, Russia was by no means a stable country.”

  It had gotten dark outside, and so Jöran leaned forward and lit a candle on the table. Bergman could smell the sulfur from the match.

  “Do you still dive?”

  “We have regular training sessions out here. The Special Ops Dive Team. I’m still in their reserves.”

  “And what do you do otherwise?”

  “I work for a private security corporation. We do consultancy work for Defense Radio Establishment, protect their operators and executives.”

  “A sort of modern Crack of Dawn,” Bergman said, and smiled.

  “Crack of Dawn was the Wild West compared with what we do nowadays. Even though our operations are done in secret, we don’t go around assassinating people,” Jöran smiled.

  “I need your help, Jöran, for an assignment that has come directly from the President of the United States. We’re going to be diving down the M/S Estonia. You, me, and hopefully Anton Modin.”

  “Obama,” Jöran said and looked astonished. “You kidding?”

  “You’d think so, right? But no, I’m dead serious. They need Sweden’s very best divers. You are one of them. At least that’s what Modin says.”

  “Have you talked to Modin? How is he? I haven’t seen him since… well…”

  “I know. No, I haven’t mentioned this dive in particular. He’s not in good shape. I need to know that you are willing to join this project before I talk to him. Modin and I can’t do the dive alone.”

  “And what does it involve?” Jöran asked.

  “They want us to bring something up from the wreck of the M/S Estonia, something that has been lying there all this time. It’s so deep inside that their robots can’t reach it. For once, they need real divers.”

  “I was on the Special Ops diving team,” Jöran said. “We were like a Swedish version of the Navy Seals, or Soviet Spetsnaz, if you like. Modin was on the team, too. In 1994, the team dove down to the M/S Estonia. But for security reasons, Modin was not allowed to join us. His family, you know… That was why he resigned, I think.”

  “That’s news to me,” Bergman said. “Modin never mentioned that Special Ops dove down to the wreck in 1994.”

  “It was a top secret, confidential, classified mission with all those fancy stamps, especially the green one with the double edging, for things involving NATO.”

  “And of all people, Modin didn’t get permission to dive?” Bergman said without expecting an answer. “I’m starting to realize why Modin is so disillusioned with Special Ops.”

  “He’s not the only one.” Jöran commented. “I’m just as disillusioned. But Modin has a chip on his shoulder. He doesn’t dive with any member of that team any more. In his mind, we let him down, because we went down without him. He can’t forgive us. Stubborn bastard!”

  “Yes,” Bergman said. “Modin doesn’t forget and he doesn’t forgive. At least not back in those days. He’s changed. He forgave me. But that’s another story,” Bergman added, thinking about Modin’s forgiving reaction to his betrayal the year before. Perhaps Modin had been more willing to let him off the hook, because he had had no choice. After all, Bergman had been blackmailed into betraying Modin; he had to protect his daughter. Bergman scratched his upper thigh through his jeans.

  “What do you say, Jöran? Do you want to get back into action again? Get away from your desk job?”

  “I certainly do. But it’s going to cost you. If the U.S. President is in on this, I imagine you have a pretty well-stacked budget.”

  “Name your price. I’ll take care of it. Whatever you think is reasonable. Money is the least of my problems.”

  CHAPTER 72

  Bergman was driving through the dense snowfall. He had to drive on dipped headlights to avoid being blinded by the heavy flurry of flakes. He was happy he’d brought Jöran Järv into the diving project. That meant he himself did not have to dive into the wreck’s inner belly. It’s going to be Modin who will dive with Jöran. All I have to make sure is that he gets in shape in time. Fuck Modin, you’ve got to sober up!

  He decided to pay him a visit, wherever he happened to be, and get him to take that
injection he had received from the CIA. He felt his inner pocket; the kit was still there. If it helped, they’d be back in business.

  CHAPTER 73

  GÖTGATAN, STOCKHOLM, MONDAY, JANUARY 18

  Modin was reading an article in the Norrtelje News:

  “The cable project, which had had some extensive delays after Jonas Zetterman’s death, will resume within a year,” Anders Glock, the new CEO of the company handling the project, promises. “This is a link between east and west, much like the railways were back in the days,” he says. “The problems the environmental movement raises are quite insignificant compared to the gains the project will provide.” Glock cites job opportunities for Swedes as well as goodwill generated in the Baltic countries and Russia. “This is the future, whether we like it or not.”

  After reading Matti Svensson’s article, Modin turned off his tablet. That was enough shit for one day. He had hoped that Kim would stop the project, but it looked like the Special Ops had taken over after all. Fuck them!

  He went to the cabinet and opened a bottle of red wine. He really needed a drink; he just couldn’t resist. The liquid had to go down his esophagus. He couldn’t remember such an urgent craving for alcohol ever. Thus far, he had been able to keep his cravings under control. He poured out a sizeable glass and downed half of it in one gulp. He then sat down on the couch in an attempt to relax, the glass and bottle at a comfortable distance.

  The trip to Estonia had changed him, both physically and mentally. He felt weak. He didn’t give a damn about anything. What had been important before now left him indifferent. He was lost.

  He had some more wine. No family; no roots; no friends. But I do have some eight million USD to drink up, he thought with a smirk. I suppose that sum of money would be enough to drink myself to death. Modin put his leg up on the coffee table so that it pressed comfortably against his stiff calves.

  What’s going to happen? The Cold War front has moved to the Baltic countries: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. History was being written there. Sweden was stuck with fragments of the old Cold War—leftovers from the secret NATO organization Crack of Dawn and other garbage, such as Loklinth and his Special Ops.