He made some coffee and sat down at the kitchen table with the daily newspaper. He browsed past most of the headlines, except for one:
The sound of a submarine was in fact the engines of the Amalia sightseeing vessel.
The article was written by Matti Svensson. It explained that the supposed submarine intrusions and the underwater sounds out in the archipelago in 1982 were presumed to have originated with the Amalia, which had been chartered for short trips to the island of Dalarö and surroundings. The vessel had three-bladed propellers and one of the blades had been damaged. Svensson was presenting this as evidence that there had never been a Soviet submarine in the vicinity. There had, indeed, never been any Soviet submarines in Swedish waters at all, as one of the peace researchers was cited further down in the article. It was all hysteria and paranoia, issues raised deliberately by the military to have ammunition for a budget increase.
Modin sighed and put the newspaper aside.
Funny how Matti Svensson just never gives up, claiming there was no submarine activity in Swedish waters. Why was he doing that? Everybody with knowledge in the matter knew there was. What was he trying to cover up?
Modin heard the familiar sound of the coffee machine as it completed its work. He toasted a couple of slices of whole wheat bread and spread them with butter and Old English Marmalade.
He looked out over the inlet. His thoughts rattled back and forth as he felt the vomit rising. His son Alexander and his daughter Ellinor were standing on the beach waving, staring at him, hollow-eyed. Ellinor had been crying, he could see, and Alexander’s lips were trembling. Their pajamas were soaked, and they were stretching out their hands as if he should rescue them, take them into the house, put them in their dry, warm beds, tuck them in, and read them a bedtime story. He could see their lips saying Daddy, come help us!
He grabbed the newspaper again and finished reading Svensson’s article. He had to solve this. He just knew that all of this tied together—the Russian submarines, the SOSUS, the Palme murder, and even the Estonia disaster. Svensson, I’ll beat you and Loklinth, and I’ll tear this whole affair wide open. Fuck you!
He read on, his lips pressed together, his upper body tense. He avoided looking out at the inlet. The article was well informed, he saw that quickly. Svensson had written about Robert W. Pelton, a former NSA employee, who had revealed a number of top secret NSA operations to the KGB in 1980. He was behind the exposure of a most clandestine U.S. operation called Holystone.
The Holystone program had begun in the 1960s as the forerunner to the SOSUS equipment. Using Holystone, the Americans had succeeded in identifying sounds emitted by the strategic submarines the Soviets used on the high seas, or rather under them. The equipment could pick up sound to form very detailed acoustic profiles of submarines when they moved through the water, operating their engines, propellers, hydrophones, or radar. As early as 1975, NSA decided that the system had been developed to perfection. In 1975, the Soviet Union deployed two India-class submarines, which in turn could carry two mini submarines each and go on operations in the archipelago for months. Maybe there was a link?
The SOSUS system was described in such great detail that Modin couldn’t help but suspect that Julia was the anonymous local source Svensson cited in his article. But why would Julia disclose all these top NSA secrets? Modin’s heart sank even deeper. Could there be anyone other than Julia in the Norrtelje area who knew about the SOSUS?
CHAPTER 49
Modin read the rest of the article. This was some of the best writing Matti Svensson had ever produced. Modin forgot his depression and despair. He could be on to something. As if on autopilot, he went back to work.
Fuck Julia! It had to be her; she had to be the one who had leaked all this. Matti Svensson would never be able to wade through the masses of technical data. He wasn’t bright enough to work all this out on his own.
The NSA, U.S. signals intelligence, was able to monitor subs from a great distance using SOSUS. According to the article, the Soviets had been far behind at the time and would have needed significantly more powerful computers to process the information.
Modin put down the newspaper and took a large gulp of his by now cold coffee, let out a yawn, and scratched his neck. This was a fascinating read, not least because it was in the form of an additional annex in the Norrtelje News.
Svensson described how the SOSUS could cross-compare sound sources and come up with a position that was accurate within a few kilometers. So, by the end of the 1970s, the Americans must have been able to trace every single Soviet submarine throughout every sea and ocean in the world, even here in the Baltic.
After the NSA intelligence analyst Ronald Pelton leaked the Holystone project to the Russians, they began to search for and find SOSUS installations, one after the other, and simply disabled them. This blinded the Americans temporarily, and their strategic nuclear advantage was gone. The Russians supposedly even found SOSUS installations near their naval base of Kronstadt, at the Leningrad end of the Gulf of Finland, and removed them. The U-137 Soviet submarine Whiskey On The Rocks that ran aground in 1981 could have been looking for “holy stones” as far inside Swedish waters as the archipelago outside the military city of Karlskrona. The source of the newspaper article suggested that NSA and the U.S. Navy had been cooperating with West Germany to install SOSUS equipment in Swedish waters.
Modin saw a squirrel skipping between two birch trees outside the window, but he couldn’t let his thoughts stray.
I’d be damned! Svensson, you’ve found a lead. I really need to find out which sources you’ve used.
Modin had heard from informers that Holystone was a cosmic top secret, and he had failed on several occasions to obtain specific documents from the archives about the submarine-hunting activities of the Swedish Navy during the 1980s. He had not even seen the many eyewitness accounts describing the shape and type of vessel, as this information was still not for the public eye, even though the Cold War had ended some two decades earlier.
This was the first time that a clear and credible motive for the submarine intrusions had been presented. Julia had told him that the U.S. had been allowed to install a SOSUS off Black Island near the Understen lighthouse in 1986, which was still used by Sweden to this day.
But earlier than that? What did they have? Were there already holy stones lying around the archipelago in the early 1970s, forcing the Russians to come and see? Did the SOSUS system upset the delicate balance of power between the two superpowers, in the way the signals capacity of the DC-3 plane had back in the 1950s? Had the U.S. managed to knock out the Russians’ ability for rapid response, or for tit-for-tat operations?
The questions were dizzying.
So how does Olof Palme fit into all of this? Modin had heard about Prime Minister Palme’s diaries but they had vanished, officially at least. People close to Palme claimed that he never even kept a diary. It seemed rather unlikely that the Prime Minister, right in the middle of a wave of submarine intrusions, had failed to do so! Every prime minister before him had kept a diary. Modin was sure that Palme was no exception. Perhaps there were entries in those diaries about this?
If a SOSUS installation proven to originate with NSA could be located and then put on the seabed in the 1980s, a link to the Palme murder could be established. The files he had read at the archives of the Security Service indicated that Palme was murdered by members of Action Team Crack of Dawn. Palme must have been considered a security risk by both, the U.S. and Sweden, because he wanted to stop Sweden’s close cooperation with the U.S. and NATO, which also meant to stop the NSA’s SOSUS surveillance in the Baltic Sea. Palme was becoming an enemy of the state.
Whatever happens, I’ll have to go diving again and find the SOSUS. But I need to speak to Julia first and find out why the hell she leaked this to that piece of shit Svensson?
CHAPTER 50
SPECIAL OPS HEADQUARTERS, STOCKHOLM, MONDAY, MAY 11
The sun was already high ove
r the tin roofs in the Östermalm district of Stockholm, an area with upscale apartment buildings. In this area, the locals sought one another’s company in bars and nightclubs between their eight-hour shifts, all around the clock. They kept an eye out for potential partners with similar values. They bought delicacies and other fine foods at the chic Östermalm market hall and visited the shops on Grev Turegatan and Stureplan nearby. These locals would never be seen straying west of the Sveavägen artery that ran north to south right through the middle of the inner city.
It was getting warmer, and during the day, temperatures were almost at summer highs. Within a month, the city’s regular residents and white-collar workers would be replaced by tourists. The locals would move out to Båstad and Torekov after Midsummer, and would only gradually come back during mid-August, when school started again.
Chris Loklinth was at work at Special Ops, which was housed in the Army Museum building; his department occupied the third floor of one wing.
He was looking forward to his vacation, when he would be sailing his yacht. He tended to cruise to the southeastern part of the Baltic, and last summer he had even been to the Kaliningrad enclave. He liked long, adventurous voyages. His wife was less into that kind of recreation, but Lieutenant Colonel Loklinth didn’t care all that much. She had no say in the matter. He had repeatedly told her that she was more than welcome to stay at home if she didn’t want to tag along. He was better off on his own anyway. What is more, he appreciated Russian vodka, which was a medicine for most things, even loneliness. His wife usually did as he suggested and stayed at home.
The summer weeks on his yacht were the only time he could relax. For the rest of the year, he had to be on full alert 24/7, saving his country and safeguarding his own and his department’s position. Unfortunately, this often meant covering up the mistakes and fuck-ups made by politicians, top officials, and other staff, both now and in the past. One example was the Brothel Affair that had exploded in 1976 and recently flared up again in the media. A carbon copy of the Profumo Affair in London in the 1960s. The Brothel Affair, a “Class I dossier,” was kept in the Special Ops safe along with the Class I dossiers on Olof Palme and other celebrities.
Loklinth unlocked the door to the archive that was hidden behind a drape in a vault connected to his office and stepped inside. In his mind, he was right in the middle of the Brothel Affair and went over to the shelf marked 1976. Never give up, he told himself as he opened an old newspaper, the very same paper that was now blowing new life into some same old shit.
He breathed deeply, pondering the affair that had once nearly brought down the Swedish government. Special Ops had been involved. It would have been a shame if they had missed such an opportunity—a pure home run. Using hidden cameras and microphones, they had collected a lot of material for potential extortion. Some of the full view shots of politicians, celebrities, and top business directors were real beauties, enough for many years of power. A portion of the material could still be used even today.
Before he closed the heavy door, he picked up Anton Modin’s dossier. Then the door slammed shut, and Loklinth locked it with a key on a chain attached to his belt.
He sat down at his solid wood desk, placed the dossier neatly in front of him, and leafed through it. It was worn and well-thumbed and had a vaguely unpleasant smell. Geez, I have to clean up this archive. Who would I trust to let in there to do the job? Have to ask Captain Lundin—he’s a good hand and the only one I can trust inside the secret DSO archive.
Bob Lundin was the sort of guy who followed orders without asking questions. He could work like a machine. He would clean up the scenes of accidents, could take on people who had an attitude, and when he wasn’t on duty, he was busy working out and fine tuning his intellect in courses around the world. He was a dangerous man with ambitions to reach the top; Loklinth was grateful he had him on a short leash. But his youthful exuberance sometimes annoyed him—yesterday he commented about the old security system in the DSO office and criticized that it was too easy to breech. Who the hell would dare to break in here. God? Ridiculous.
Loklinth himself had thinning hair and was getting older. No more youthful exuberance. But that didn’t matter. The fact was, he had the perfect profile for his line of work, and age was not important. Everyone knew that.
What else do they know about me? he wondered. Nothing. No one knows what I really do at work, not even my wife. I am saving the country is what I am doing, for fuck’s sake!
He put on his reading glasses and focused on Anton Modin’s dossier. After meeting Modin out at Beckholmen, he was sure that this was the last chapter of this business. Modin knew that he would shy away from nothing if he endangered the status quo. No matter how hard it might hit him personally.
The first page had Modin’s personal details along with a photo of a young man wearing a commando beret and a 1959 green field uniform. Modin looked grim and determined in that one, and Loklinth could not help smiling at what he saw. Modin had been so eager, willing to do whatever it took for the good of the country. In the picture, it seemed as if he was ready to walk past the photographer and brush him aside to get to work. Vintage Modin! Over time, he developed a deep loyalty. He believed in his service for the good of the country. He was moldable and did more or less everything he was ordered to do. He was the perfect operative.
In that photo, taken in 1984, Modin was 19 years old. A little fair hair peeked out from under one side of his beret. He looked well-built and lean. Bright blue eyes, a little cleft in his chin, high cheekbones, and a broad neck. According to the accompanying data, Modin was born on November 2, 1965, in the Katarina parish of Stockholm. He was unmarried at the time the picture was taken, and weighed 190 pounds at six-foot, two inches tall.
Loklinth knew that Modin couldn’t be bribed, so you had to scare him into submission, and that was difficult at times. And the deal he had struck the previous summer with Special Ops had made the situation even more complicated. The solution to the Modin problem had not been proposed by Special Ops but by the Minister of Justice.
The naïve bitch liked him! You can’t bargain with your worst enemies, you have to exterminate them, Loklinth thought. Otherwise you, in turn, won’t keep your job long. History demonstrated this over and over again. Eradicate and destroy. Then there’ll be peace and quiet.
Problem was that Modin had been like a son to him. I loved him like a father once, Loklinth reminisced. Still do, actually, but he’s the black sheep of the family. Started back in the 1990s, when he explored the background of the M/S Estonia ferry disaster. And he just keeps going. No one can protect him now. He’s got a couple of Security Service suits in his pocket, but what good will that do? He doesn’t stand a chance. Too bad he doesn’t understand that. Could have made a great boss here at Special Ops one day.
Loklinth got up, his waist sweaty from leaning back in the chair. He then lined up another chair, which had been standing against the wall near the entrance to the vault.
Who the hell keeps moving the furniture around in here?
Suddenly his legs began to shake. He slapped his thigh lightly, but the trembling did not stop. He sank down on a chair. His scalp had begun to itch terribly, and he scratched so hard he drew blood. It took several minutes for him to recover, still sweaty and now shaken.
“Bob! Come in here! Lundin! On the double!” he yelled through the office door that he had left open.
“We have to put an end to this Modin business.”
CHAPTER 51
GRISSLEHAMN, MONDAY, MAY 11
“Sources in both the Swedish Navy and the American Navy have confirmed the media reports regarding the acquisition of sound libraries from the U.S. and American assistance to Sweden when building a chain of underwater systems (SOSUS) in the Baltic Sea in order to trace the movements of Soviet submarines. NATO assisted by providing equipment and knowhow in exchange for being able to access a certain number of results of the signals surveillance. In the late 1980s, c
ooperation became so intensive that U.S. Navy officers would visit Sweden on a weekly basis.”
(Lifeline Lost, Robert Dalsjö, Senior Analyst Swedish Defense Research Agency FOI, page 242)
Once he had finished reading Matti Svensson’s article in Norrtelje News, Modin put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher and went to the beach where the kayaks were bobbing up and down in the shallows. He put his paddle and life jacket in the cockpit.
I’ll be paddling over to Black Island and can be reached on my cell phone, he texted Axman. I will be gone a few days. I’ll call you.
The wind was against him all the way out. Each stroke of the paddle required effort. Paddling a kayak was the last thing he wanted to do. He wasn’t feeling well, neither physically nor mentally, but he just had to ask Julia about her disclosures to Svensson. By the time he was dragging the kayak onto dry land on the southern side of the islet, he was wet and beat. He hid the kayak under twigs and branches, then started up the incline.
Julia was nowhere to be found. Modin first looked in the shelter, then in the cottage. As he climbed up the steps, he heard the radio playing softly. The door was half open.
“Julia!”
No answer.
He sensed something was wrong. He entered the hall cautiously and in so doing stepped on a pair of leather clogs, which, judging by their size, belonged to Julia.
Enemy of the State (Anton Modin Book 2) Page 22
