Under Water (Anton Modin Book 3)

by Anders Jallai

  “Open up, Modin!” The echo rolled around in the silence. He could hear someone open up a door some floors down.

  “Anyone there?” said a woman’s voice.

  Bergman held his breath. The door slammed shut. A short while later, Bergman thought he heard footsteps in Modin’s apartment. The blinds were being pulled up, the light in the hall was turned on. Bergman breathed a sigh of relief when he saw two hairy shins approaching the letter box.

  “What?” Modin opened the door and stuck out his pale head, still half asleep. There was a whiff of stale booze. Eyes like slits, hair messed up bedhead style, and pepper and salt stubble covering half his face.

  “Can I come in?”

  Barely inside Modin’s apartment, Bergman showed him the TT announcement on his cellphone. Modin took it, and read while walking to the kitchen, where he turned on the coffee machine without a word.

  “I’m worried, Modin.”

  “What the hell’s that all about?” Modin said rubbing his eyes. “I’ve not fucked any 22-year-old. Must be Special Ops up to its old tricks.”

  “They must have fabricated the evidence. This is serious. It could be jail. Don’t let them get hold of you. They won’t let you off the hook this time.”

  “I don’t know whether I have the energy to run away any more, Bergman.”

  “But if you’re in the slammer, we miss the dive. We can’t do it without you. The dive could be the solution to your problems with Loklinth. If we find what we should in the Estonia wreckage, the U.S. will protect us and Loklinth won’t be able to touch us.”

  “Loklinth will never allow us dive down to the M/S Estonia. Who knows what’s at stake for him. All I know is we’ll never get out to the wreck site, Bergman. He’ll kill us first.”

  Modin looked anxious. The alcohol had made him weak, and not only physically. Bergman attempted a smile.

  “He won’t dare,” Bergman said. “If he’s worth his money, he knows it’s the Americans who have hired us. We can handle Loklinth and Special Ops,” Bergman said. “It’ll be the final battle.”

  Modin threw up into the kitchen sink.

  “Loklinth’s going to die,” he said, his head lowered. He spat a few times, wiped his mouth, and turned on the faucet. “I feel like shit.”

  “I suggest we leave this apartment, pronto,” Bergman said. “It’s no longer safe, and Grisslehamn is too dangerous. Get your clothes, we’re leaving.”

  CHAPTER 83

  BASTUGATAN, STOCKHOLM, FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 5

  They turned onto Bastugatan street, drove up toward the crest of the hill, and slowed down as they reached the park named after the Swedish author Ivar Lo-Johansson, opposite Number 21. Bergman was driving Modin’s car. They stopped by Yggdrasil, the old hollow ash tree in the little park. The weather was gray, gloomy, and oppressive. It was chilly and the road slippery.

  “Will winter ever end?” Modin said and rested his head against the cold window.

  “There’s a Saab parked outside your building, Bergman,” he said when they arrived on Bastugatan street.

  “Darn, do we dare it?”

  “A black Saab means either Security Service or Special Ops,” Modin said, leaning his head back on the headrest.

  He still had a hangover, worse than ever, and found it hard to take this escape seriously. Bergman wanted to drive away, away from Special Ops and the police. Deliver me from evil! But he, too, wondered what could happen. Evil tends to win. There’s only one way of stopping them; his thoughts strayed back to killing Loklinth.

  “Let’s go!” Bergman said and accelerated down Bastugatan.

  As they passed the Saab, they saw two men in the front seat of the car.

  “Special Ops,” Modin said. “Without a doubt.”

  He slid down in his seat instinctively. He was on the run again.

  CHAPTER 84

  MUSKÖ ISLAND, FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 5

  Really kind of you to let us stay here, Jöran,” Bergman said, chewing a gingerbread cookie.

  Modin was studying Jöran Järv carefully. He looked different, older of course, but also more gentle. Not exactly the Jöran Modin remembered from the days at Special Ops.

  “I’m doing it for you, Modin,” Järv said. “You’re one of us. You never leave a man behind, you remember that?”

  “I remember,” Modin said and lowered his head. Then he stretched out his hand and Jöran grabbed it hard.

  “Thanks, Jöran,” he said.

  Modin felt awkward. He and Bergman had been at Jöran’s place for a couple of hours. Järv seemed calm and understanding. He didn’t even blink when listening to the plans to dive down to M/S Estonia in the middle of the winter.

  “Modin, I know you’re still angry with me. And perhaps you can never forgive me, but for what it’s worth, I am very sorry for what happened to your family.”

  Modin poured tea. He couldn’t hold a grudge against Jöran anymore; he was almost surprised with himself. Jöran’s sudden apology took him by surprise.

  They were sitting in the kitchen of Jöran Järv’s cottage on the island of Muskö. It was pitch black outside and about twenty-eight degrees Fahrenheit. The overcast sky had cleared up during the evening. The low stratus clouds that had been covering Stockholm were now on their way toward disintegration over the Baltics. The moon could be seen far off, and below the ice twinkled and shifted in shades of dark blue. Modin had to think about ice-skating.

  “So, what happens now?” Jöran asked said as they all sat down around the fire.

  “We have to keep a low profile,” Bergman said, looking indirectly at Modin who seemed half-asleep. “We must force Special Ops to stop the case against Modin from going forward. That is step number one.”

  “How?”

  “Anyone have any ideas?” Bergman said.

  Silence descended on the cottage. A clock could be heard ticking, and Modin could be heard munching on his gingerbread snap. That was all.

  “We have to kidnap Loklinth,” Modin said.

  “Are you completely out of your friggin’ mind?” Jöran Järv exclaimed.

  “No, not a bad idea,” Bergman said. “We’ve done worse things in our time. We can hide him in your basement, Jöran.”

  “Christ, I’ll get a life sentence for that.”

  “Not if we do it the right way, you won’t,” Modin said. “We’ve been at war against Special Ops before. They are vulnerable. The worst thing they can think of is exposure. These guys hide from the public and you have to be ruthless with them. The slightest hesitation or weakness will make them counter strike. You have to scare the shit out of them.”

  “And exactly how do we do that?”

  “You’ll see. We’ll have to work like we did before. Do you remember, Jöran? When our lives were at stake during assignments. That’s when it works.” Modin changed his position and had some more tea before continuing. “When you’re no longer afraid to die. That’s when the enemy flinches… when they think they are being confronted by an overwhelming, ultra-motivated force.”

  “Who exactly has given you the task of diving down to the Estonia?” Jöran asked, trying to change the topic of conversation.

  “The President of the United States,” Bergman said. “The most powerful man in the world wants us to dive to retrieve something from the wreck.”

  “What could be so vital?”

  “Not sure, but it must be very valuable if Obama gets involved.”

  “Interesting,” Jöran said and looked as if he was starting to feel at ease with the company, despite the kidnapping plans with his own cottage as base.

  “Makes you wonder what the object is,” Modin said. “And what it could mean for Special Ops, given they don’t want us to dive?”

  “It must have something to do with the illegal arms shipments on the Estonia,” Jöran Järv suggested. “What do you think, Modin? Perhaps it is the weapons that were smuggled out of the Soviet Union?”

  “Most likely. The Estonians seem
to be siding with Special Ops in this case. Neither Sweden nor Estonia want the fact to come out that a passenger ferry was used for smuggling, which may have caused the disaster.” Modin broke a ginger snap and played with the pieces on the table. “And my family’s death.”

  “What I don’t get,” Bergman said, avoiding a discussion about Modin’s dead children, “is why Special Ops was smuggling weapons out of the Soviet Union in the first place. And why on the Estonia?”

  “It was called Russia, then, by 1994,” Jöran Järv replied. “And it was an unstable new nation. NATO feared it could collapse, especially when the U.S.-friendly semi-alcoholic Yeltsin was at the helm. The idea was to save what could be saved before any coup d’état could take place. A bit of a preventive strike operation, partly meant to stop the mafia from getting hold of vital and dangerous military technology like nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons, and partly to steal Russian inventions.”

  “But where do Special Ops and Sweden fit into all this?”

  “Special Ops was simply acting as a front for the CIA and NATO. Not for the first time. Sweden made the deals with the Russian military, and would get paid handsomely by the Americans. Special Ops is like a branch of the CIA.”

  “So, why did the ferry sink?”

  “That’s what we don’t know,” Jöran Järv said. “I don’t think that even the Americans know. Only the crew. Were you able to get any answers on your trip to Estonia, Modin? Bergman mentioned you’d been there.”

  “A crew member said that a large hole had been blasted in the hull.”

  “By whom?”

  “Don’t know. The GRU? The Russian mafia? There could have been many out there who wanted to stop the transport.”

  “And what more did he say?”

  “We were crudely interrupted.”

  Jöran Järv and Bill Bergman saw how Modin opened his eyes wide, while drawing his hand across his brow and a shudder went through him, which made the others look aside.

  “Imagine if there was a Russian Golf-class submarine threatening the crew with a loaded torpedo,” Bergman said. He breathed deeply. “In that case they would have had no choice.”

  “You’re quite right,” Jöran said. “That is why all radio communications in the area at the time remain classified.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  “There is no registered radio traffic from the Estonia apart from the Mayday call just before the vessel sank. The Estonia must have had more radio traffic during the night, both via the radio telephone and VHF. Nothing has been registered.”

  “The radio traffic is stored at Swedish Defense Radio,” Modin said wiggling his way back into the conversation. “They will never release that information. Defense Radio Establishment FRA surveys all radio traffic in the Baltic Sea, 24/7. The fact that there is no radio traffic at all implies that it is indeed classified information. All of it. A total cover-up by the state.”

  “The same thing happened during the submarine intrusions,” Bergman said. “But why did you smuggle things out on the Estonia? Wasn’t there any freighter available?”

  “Good question,” Jöran Järv said. “This was done at the convenience of Special Ops. They always follow the path of least resistance. It was the cheapest way of doing things, and most discreet, too. A freighter would have meant involving more people in the whole plan and the Russian nationalists could have caught wind of what was going on. From an American point of view, it was vitally important that as few people as possible knew about the whole operation. They have had bad experiences with Swedish operations in the past. They presumably suspected that information would leak, both via the Swedes and the Estonians. To start with, we used diplomatic mail, but the Swedish Embassy in Moscow started to grumble as the amount of goods we managed to salvage increased and became bulkier and heavier.”

  “Using a passenger vessel to smuggle dangerous weapons systems is fucking irresponsible, even unethical.” Bergman seemed angry.

  “Sure, in hindsight it is.”

  They had returned to where the discussion started and now leaned back, their eyes half-shut. They had circled around the problem for a couple of hours, from the time that Jöran Järv had opened his front door and told Modin that of course he could stay at his place for as long as he needed.

  CHAPTER 85

  SPECIAL OPS HEADQUARTERS, STOCKHOLM, FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 5

  What do you mean you can’t find them? You’re not looking close enough. In a small village like Stockholm, two people cannot vanish into thin air.”

  Loklinth paced the room in a rage. He was scratching his head and a shower of dandruff rained down in the rays of sunshine that beamed through the window at a low angle and lit up the hardwood floors of Special Ops Headquarters.

  “Check his friends, relatives, acquaintances. Use telephone tapping, data traffic, mail, credit cards, social media, whatever. Nobody just vanishes off the face of the earth. This is no longer the Cold War with invisible ink and dead letter boxes. Find Modin and Bergman within twenty-four hours. That’s an order!”

  “May I use all the resources we have at our disposal?” Lundin spoke slowly and went to stand over by the portrait of Charles XIII.

  “Yes, whatever it takes. We simply have to put a stop to Modin’s activities. Society is not ready for a martyr on the loose. Who knows when and how public opinion will turn. Worse lunatics than Modin have become folk heroes. Can’t let that happen.”

  Lundin looked at his boss. He noticed that he looked both pathetic and scared.

  He thinks Modin’s going to kill him. Yes, fuck, that’s what it’s all about. He’s afraid of dying, Lundin thought, as he, by force of habit, straightened the portrait. Soon this portrait will be hanging in my room, the room of the successor.

  He stroked the face of King Charles XIII with his fingers, then turned to face Loklinth.

  “In that case, I request permission to employ the Barbro Team.”

  CHAPTER 86

  MUSKÖ ISLAND, FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 5

  If we can pull off kidnapping Loklinth,” Modin said. “Then we can dive while Special Ops and the police are looking for him. That is one opening.”

  “You’re right,” Bergman said. “Loklinth’s disappearance will be a diversionary tactic. Special Ops will be as good as paralyzed without their boss.”

  “How shall we equip ourselves?” Jöran Järv asked. “We will need masses of diving equipment.”

  “We’ll have to send Kim. She has the financial means; and she promised to help.” Bergman went to get a small notepad from the kitchen counter and pulled a pen from his pocket. “What do we need? Might as well get the equipment right away. Once Loklinth is captured, it’ll become much more difficult. They’ll be looking for us. By that time, we better are ready to go into the water.”

  Bergman started to write their wishlist of diving and technical equipment. He was excited despite the danger of their hardest mission ever looming over them: kidnapping Special Ops boss Chris Loklinth.

  Modin watched Bergman as if to detect a crack in his constant flow of words about Kim. Well, well, so she would be the one doing the purchasing. Why not? That would be one way to keep an eye on her. Modin blinked and tried to recap the events at the barn back in southern Estonia. What had Kim been doing while he had been held by the Barbro Team? He didn’t know. She hadn’t told him on the trip back. Bergman trusts her. I guess so do I… That’s easiest.

  “I figure we should grab Loklinth at home,” Modin said.

  “Where does he live?” Bergman said.

  “In Djursholm, down by the water’s edge,” Modin said. “A rather isolated detached villa out on a peninsula. He’s likely to be home alone, without bodyguards. At least he didn’t have any when I worked with him. It won’t be much more dangerous than it would have been during my time at Special Ops. Since he got divorced, he’s been renting the house from a friend.”

  “Fine,” Jöran said. “But I think we should count on having to deal
with guards of some sort. That man has a sixth sense. That’s why he’s still alive.”

  “It could be difficult to get close to him in that case,” Modin remarked.

  “It will be difficult no matter what. We are going to need someone inside. Do we know someone in Loklinth’s inner circle?”

  Jöran Järv went out to the kitchen to grab three premium lagers.

  “I don’t believe we do,” Modin said as he accepted an opened bottle of beer. He took a swig right away.

  “Wait a minute,” Bergman said. “We’ve got Kim Zetterman. She mentioned that she knew Loklinth. Thought he was a sack of shit, of course, but they did do business together.”

  “That’s right.” Modin drank straight from the bottle. “Loklinth and one or two others are helping her with the cable project at Grisslehamn. We can exploit that fact. I’ll have a word with Kim. Do you have any more beer?”

  “Make yourself at home. You can get more from the fridge,” Jöran said. “If we have an insider, then we might actually succeed. I suggest we approach the house from the sea side, over the ice. He can be transported over the ice. Sunday evening?”

  They finished the shopping list, had some beer, and reminisced a few of Modin and Jöran’s Special Ops escapades back in the 1980s. One of them was breaking into the headquarters of the Social Democratic Party in central Stockholm. They snapped photos of Olof Palme’s appointments calendar for the year 1986. Modin claimed to have forgotten the incident, but Jöran Järv laughed at the memories and pointed out that people tend to forget what they want to forget. Modin had turned silent.

  “And it wasn’t only his calendar we photographed, Bergman. That metal box also contained a classified agenda for Olof Palme’s meeting in Moscow during the official visit in 1986, a meeting which never took place because he was murdered. Thank goodness.”

  “This was ages ago,” Modin said.

  “I’m really surprised that you don’t remember, Modin,” Jöran continued.

  “What did you do with the copies of those secret documents?” Bergman said, squirming in his chair.