Jaws of Death

by Paul Adam

  At the edge of the gardens was a metal railing, then a forty-metre drop to the road along the waterfront. There was a ferry terminal on the far side of the road, a huge white ship moored alongside it, its side emblazoned with the words VIKING LINE and the vessel’s name – Cinderella.

  They stood there for a few minutes, gazing out across the city – the Old Town away to their left, a funfair on an island across the water. Max could see the bright lights on the rides, just make out the shapes of the cars careering around the roller coaster. The faint sound of music carried across the harbour. Then they went back along Fjällgatan to the Sista Styvern.

  The restaurant was down some steps, built into the hillside above the port. Max smelled the enticing aroma of onions and garlic and spices as they went down into a vaulted reception area containing a counter and glass cabinets of drinks and chilled desserts. In a room to the right were two large wooden tables laden with food – the smörgåsbord eat-all-you-like buffet for which the Swedes were famous.

  It must have been obvious that they weren’t Swedish, for the young woman behind the counter spoke to them in English. ‘Hi, welcome to the Sista Styvern. There are more tables outside on the terrace.’

  Consuela looked at the customers helping themselves to food from the big tables. ‘So how does this work?’ she asked. ‘Do we serve ourselves?’

  ‘You pay a set charge for the food of ninety-eight kronor each,’ the young woman replied. ‘Eat as much as you want. Drinks are extra.’

  ‘We’re meeting someone here. I’m not sure if he’s arrived yet.’

  ‘No problem. Find a table, then pay when you’re ready to eat.’

  They went outside onto the terrace and sat down at a table. It was like a conservatory, with glass walls on three sides, the panes slid open to let in a cooling breeze. Max looked around at the other customers. Most were casually dressed, some just in T-shirts and jeans. There were big groups of young people talking and laughing, and one or two couples seated at the smaller tables. There was no man on his own who might have been Axel Svensson.

  Below the terrace, the ground dropped away steeply to the road by the waterfront. Max saw a small passenger launch crossing the harbour from one of the outlying islands and pulling in to a jetty near the Gamla Stan. The streetlights of the Old Town were on, illuminating the pink-, red- and orange-painted walls of the ancient buildings.

  A little after nine o’clock, a man came out onto the terrace and scanned the tables, as if he were looking for someone. He was in his thirties with shoulder-length blond hair and a close-trimmed blond beard. He saw Max – the only teenager in the restaurant – and came across to their table.

  ‘Max?’

  Max nodded.

  ‘I’m Axel Svensson.’

  Svensson held out his hand. Max shook it, then introduced Chris and Consuela.

  ‘Let’s get something to eat,’ Svensson said. ‘Then we’ll talk.’

  They followed him back inside. Consuela paid for their meals and they were given a large plate and some cutlery each. It was Max’s kind of restaurant. No waiters fussing around, no menu to read, just a mountain of food and no restrictions on how much you could take. He went round the table, helping himself to the various dishes – rice, potatoes, stews, salads, smoked salmon, a couple of large chunks of crusty bread – until he needed both hands to take the weight of his plate.

  Consuela looked disapprovingly at his mound of food. ‘Max, you can’t possibly eat all that.’

  ‘You just watch me,’ Max replied.

  Chris bought beers for himself and Consuela and Svensson, and a large juice for Max, and they went back out to their table. Svensson looked around discreetly, examining the other customers. He seemed tense, nervy. They made small talk to begin with, Svensson asking them how they were finding Stockholm, what their hotel was like – boring stuff that didn’t interest Max. He concentrated on his food for a few minutes – he hadn’t had a decent meal for days. Then Svensson turned to him. He had bright blue eyes, but they weren’t a cold blue. They were more like the blue of a Mediterranean sky: clear and warm.

  ‘You said you might know something about Erik’s disappearance.’

  Max nodded. ‘That’s right. But could you tell me first what exactly happened to him. I don’t know the details.’

  ‘He went camping on Gotland last September. That’s an island in the Baltic, to the south of Stockholm, about three hours by ferry. His clothes and rucksack were found on the beach one evening by walkers who thought it was a bit strange and reported it to the local police. The police looked everywhere for Erik, but found no trace of him. They concluded that he must have gone swimming and got into difficulty, been swept out to sea by the currents and drowned.’

  ‘But his body hasn’t been found?’ Max said.

  ‘Not so far.’

  Max tore off a chunk of bread and chewed it. ‘Did you ever think that it might not have been an accident?’

  Svensson gave a slight start. ‘That is a strange question. Why do you ask it?’

  ‘Because of your reaction when I called you – leaving your office and finding another phone, not wanting to meet me there. Also, you keep looking nervously around the restaurant. You seem worried about something …’

  Svensson took a moment to reply. He smoothed his beard with his fingertips, his brow furrowing pensively. ‘As I mentioned on the phone,’ he said, ‘the work we do is sometimes controversial, sometimes political. We have opponents – enemies who do not agree with us.’

  ‘What kind of enemies?’ Max asked.

  ‘People in power; businessmen. Environmentalists are a nuisance to the big multinational corporations that want to continue drilling for oil, mining for minerals, chopping down trees, selling petrol-guzzling cars and all the rest of it. They don’t like people getting in their way, and that is what we do. We question them, we challenge them, we oppose them. That doesn’t make us popular.’

  ‘And you think your phones are being tapped by these businesses?’

  ‘Or by the security services, yes. We’ve also had a couple of suspicious break-ins at our offices. Files and laptops have been stolen. And only last month, one of my colleagues was set upon and beaten up by a gang of thugs as he left the office late in the evening. So we’re careful about what we say on the phone, where we go, who we meet.’

  Max glanced around the table. Chris was wolfing down a plate of food that was almost as big as Max’s; Consuela was toying with a green salad and a small slice of ham. They were listening to the conversation, but leaving all the talking to Max.

  ‘And my question about Erik’s disappearance …?’ Max asked.

  Svensson looked steadily at him for a second before replying. ‘Yes, I wondered about it. The whole thing was very odd. The pile of clothes on the beach, Erik missing. At first the police thought it might have been suicide, but that was ridiculous. Erik wasn’t the type to take his own life. So it had to have been an accident. The other alternatives were just too far-fetched to believe.’

  ‘What other alternatives?’

  ‘Well, if he didn’t commit suicide and it wasn’t an accident, that only leaves abduction or murder. Erik was an ecologist studying orang-utans and trees. Why would anyone kidnap him or kill him? That wouldn’t make sense.’

  ‘But it’s what happened,’ Max said.

  Svensson stared at him. ‘What?’

  ‘It’s what happened,’ Max repeated. ‘Erik was kidnapped and later killed.’

  ‘Are you serious? Kidnapped by whom?’

  Max told him about Shadow Island, about what he’d seen there; how he’d found Erik Blomkvist’s name in the files in Julius Clark’s office. Svensson listened intently, his eyes opening wide with shock and horror. When Max had finished, the Swede took a long gulp of beer.

  ‘My God, is that true?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s true,’ Consuela confirmed. ‘I was there too.’

  ‘So was I,’ Chris added. ‘I’m not a scientis
t, but I was working for an environmental pressure group like yours in the Amazon when I was kidnapped and taken to Shadow Island.’

  ‘But why?’ Svensson said. ‘Why would this Julius Clark kidnap people?’

  ‘To brainwash them,’ Max said, ‘using a drug called Episuderon. There were other prisoners too, including a British ecologist named Redmond Ashworth-Ames. And my father.’

  ‘Your father?’ Svensson blinked a couple of times and gaped at Max. ‘But I read it in the papers. Your father was killed, wasn’t he? And your mother—’

  ‘My mother was framed and wrongfully imprisoned,’ Max interrupted. ‘My father is alive. He somehow escaped from Shadow Island, then vanished. I’m trying to find him. You knew him, didn’t you?’

  Svensson hesitated for a moment as he ate a piece of smoked salmon with some mustard and dill sauce. Then he nodded. ‘I met him when he was in Stockholm three years ago.’ He glanced at Consuela. ‘I recognize you from his stage show. You were his assistant, weren’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Consuela replied. ‘Did we meet back then? I don’t remember you.’

  ‘No, we didn’t meet. Alex came to Erik’s flat alone one morning. I was there too.’

  ‘My dad went to Erik’s flat?’ Max said incredulously. ‘He knew Erik?’

  Svensson didn’t reply immediately. He studied Max, then looked at Consuela and Chris. He seemed to be weighing something up in his mind, deciding whether to confide in them.

  ‘Please, you must help us,’ Max said imploringly. ‘If you know something about my dad, something that could help us find him, you must tell us.’

  Svensson held Max’s gaze for a few seconds. Then he said quietly, ‘Did your father ever mention the Cedar Alliance?’

  Max sat bolt upright, as if he’d had an electric shock. ‘The Cedar Alliance?’

  He pushed his plate to one side, his food half finished, and leaned forward over the table. Suddenly he wasn’t hungry any more. ‘Dad mentioned it in a letter he left me. But he didn’t say what it was.’

  Svensson looked around the restaurant terrace, scrutinizing the other customers. No one was paying them any attention: they were all engrossed in their own groups, their own conversations. But he obviously didn’t want to risk being overheard, for when he spoke again, his voice was low and discreet.

  ‘You must know how mankind is destroying the environment – it’s common knowledge. We’re overfishing our seas, we’re polluting the oceans and the soil with poisonous chemicals. We’re stripping the forests, we’re turning farmland into deserts. We’re threatening dozens of species of animals with extinction by our activities. We can’t seem to stop ourselves. We have to find new reserves of oil to extract, new mineral deposits to mine, new products to make and sell, all to fuel our insatiable need to consume and make money.

  ‘Greed – that’s the root cause of all the problems. Most of the world’s population lives in terrible poverty, but we in the West have never been richer, and our economies, our lives, are controlled by businesses that seek only to make bigger and bigger profits, regardless of the cost to the environment. The rich and powerful don’t care what happens to the Earth so long as they still have their big houses and their yachts and their private jets.’

  Svensson broke off and gave a rueful smile. ‘I’m sorry, this sounds like a speech. What I’m saying is that our planet is sick, and it’s going to get sicker unless we change our ways and start taking better care of it. But that isn’t an easy task because these greedy businessmen and their friends are making too much money out of exploiting the Earth. And their money talks. It buys them political support, it buys them influence and power – more power than many of the world’s governments. They allow nothing to stand in the way of their profiteering. No one can stop them.’

  He paused again. ‘But the Cedar Alliance is trying.’

  ‘How?’ Max said. ‘What is it? What does it do?’

  ‘It’s a secret global organization dedicated to protecting the Earth from over-exploitation,’ Svensson replied. ‘I say “organization”, but it’s not like most other organizations. It doesn’t have a headquarters, it doesn’t have any offices or a staff of employees. It’s what its name suggests – an alliance of people and groups around the world who share the same beliefs and aims. Many of them work for environmental groups like mine, but not all. It’s far bigger than that. There are scientists and students in the Alliance. Journalists, teachers, lawyers, doctors, farmers, politicians; all sorts of other people too. We’re all different, but we all share the same overriding objective: to save the planet for our children to enjoy, as we have enjoyed it.’

  ‘My dad said it had the “conscience of the world on its side”,’ Max said.

  ‘It does. How could any responsible, thoughtful human being not want to protect the world we live in?’

  ‘But what does my dad have to do with the Cedar Alliance?’

  ‘Your father was – is,’ Svensson corrected himself, ‘one of the leaders of the Alliance.’

  ‘My dad?’ Max said in disbelief. ‘But he’s a professional escapologist.’

  ‘So? As I said, there are many different people in the organization. Hundreds, probably thousands. There is no membership list, you see. The Alliance is organized into very small groups – cells, we call them – like a spy ring. The members of each cell know their fellow members, maybe only half a dozen people, but they don’t know who is in other cells or how many people are above them in the organization. It’s safer that way. It means that no one person can betray the Alliance, and our enemies don’t know who to attack.’

  ‘You’re sure my dad is one of the leaders?’ Max said. He was still finding it hard to take in what Svensson had said.

  ‘No doubt about it. That’s why he came to Erik’s flat. To meet the members of our cell. A big multinational mineral corporation was trying to get permission for a huge new mine in Lapland – that’s the area that runs across the north of Norway, Sweden and Finland. We were trying to stop them. Your dad had visited the other Alliance cells in Norway and Finland to coordinate the campaign to stop the mining corporation. He gave us money from a central fund to help pay for publicity and research.’

  ‘The Alliance has a central fund?’

  ‘Donations from supporters, some small, some big. Not all wealthy people are the same. There are many who are concerned about the environment.’

  Max turned to Consuela. ‘You didn’t know anything about this?’

  Consuela shook her head, bewildered by Svensson’s revelation. ‘Nothing. I remember the tour. We did shows in Oslo and Helsinki as well as Stockholm. But I had no idea that your dad was meeting environmental campaigners, or that he had anything to do with this Cedar Alliance.’

  ‘How could you not know? You were with him,’ said Max.

  ‘Not all the time. There were plenty of opportunities for him to have secret meetings.’

  Max sat back in his chair. His head was swimming. He felt as if he’d been tipped upside down and spun round and round. He was in a daze, his whole world topsy-turvy. So this was the secret life his father had been leading; the secret life he’d kept hidden not only from Max, but from Max’s mother and Consuela too.

  ‘I can see this has come as a bit of a shock to you,’ Svensson said.

  Max nodded. ‘I knew none of this. My mum didn’t know either.’

  ‘Your father had to keep it secret,’ Svensson said. ‘You must see that. The Cedar Alliance’s strength is its invisibility. It operates quietly, stealthily, guiding affairs from a distance. If our enemies knew who the leaders were, they would try to eliminate them.’

  ‘Julius Clark found out about my dad,’ Max said. ‘That’s why he kept him a prisoner on Shadow Island.’

  ‘But you said your father escaped.’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘Then that’s good. He must be out there somewhere, still working for the Cedar Alliance.’

  ‘But where?’ Max asked. ‘Where would he
go? Where would he hide? Do you know?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t … Maybe he will try to contact you, or send you a message.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Max said, but he didn’t think it likely. His father had gone underground – to protect himself, but perhaps also to protect Max. He wouldn’t make contact in case he put Max in danger.

  Consuela put her hand gently on Max’s arm. ‘I didn’t know any of this, Max, believe me,’ she told him. ‘It’s as big a shock to me as it is to you.’

  ‘I know.’ Max smiled at her, though there was a heaviness in his heart. He’d thought he was close to his dad. Now he was beginning to wonder how well he’d really known him.

  ‘Can I ask you one more thing?’ he said to Svensson. ‘What work was Erik doing before he disappeared?’

  ‘He was working in Borneo.’

  ‘In Borneo?’ Just like Redmond Ashworth-Ames, Max thought. That had to be important.

  ‘Yes. In Tanjung Puting National Park. Do you know much about bio-fuels?’

  Max shook his head.

  ‘They’re fuels made from plants, like maize, sugar beet or the seeds of the oil-palm tree. They can be used in cars and machinery instead of petrol. Some people see them as a greener, cleaner fuel that will help slow down global warming. But things aren’t that simple. To produce bio-fuels you need land, a lot of land. In Borneo, for example, they’ve been clearing vast areas of rainforest to plant oil palms. Land has been stolen from the local people, trees have been felled illegally and the wild animals – like orang-utans – driven out or killed. People are going hungry because land that was once used for growing food is now being used for bio-fuel production. Erik was studying the impact of oil-palm plantations on wildlife and plants and campaigning to stop the destruction of the rainforest.’

  ‘Thank you for telling us this,’ Max said.

  ‘I’m glad I could help,’ the Swede replied. ‘Your father is a good man. He’s doing important work. I hope you find him.’

  They left the Sista Styvern shortly after that. Max didn’t finish his plate of food – he’d lost his appetite. On the street outside, they shook hands with Svensson and parted company. He went one way along Fjällgatan, Max, Consuela and Chris went the other. It was late, but it still wasn’t fully dark yet. The sky was dusky, the street shrouded in a gloomy twilight.