by Jon Stenhugg
“When a Swedish ex-Parliamentarian buys a manual for a SHKVALL it doesn’t sound like the Russians to me,” said Ekman.
“So you guys know about the manual too. They’ll be making neon signs about this next week. Lasse, I think I’d better get back to my post and inform the chain of command. I guess you’ll be doing the same. Do you want me to contact Hurtree?”
“He won’t be official?”
“No.”
“Just a senior citizen on a holiday?”
“Yes, exactly,” said Peters.
“Then contact him. I’ll let you know how we should continue with this later. I’m glad I called you,” said Ekman. “It feels as though we made some progress today.”
“Yeah,” said Peters. “Let’s hope it doesn’t blow up in our faces.”
“Oh,” said Ekman, “And your man on board the MS Sally? What happened to him?”
Peters grimaced at the memory, and replied in a low voice, “He went down with the rest of them. Never made it back to his unit.”
“And one further question, Captain Peters,” asked Ekman, closing the file in front of him, “have you ever heard of a Stasi agent called Magdalena?”
“No,” said Peters, “But there must have been thousands of Stasi agents. Does she have any bearing on this case?”
“I don’t know yet,” said Ekman. “It’s just a hunch. An agent we never caught. Maybe you can check your records when you get home.”
“I’d say you should ask Hurtree if he shows up.”
*
In Heidelberg, Germany, Captain Charlie Peters had been waiting for the difference in time zones to open the window to Pennsylvania in the United States. He dialled the number to his predecessor, an investigator who had been a legend before finally retiring: Lieutenant John Hurtree.
“Good morning, you’ve already made me grumpy. What more can you possibly want?” asked Hurtree as he answered.
“Good morning, John, it’s Charlie from the CID in Heidelberg. Charlie Peters.”
“Well, hell, Charlie. Are you so bored you gotta call me, or are you stuck in a game of Scrabble?”
“I need some help on something you were working on before you left. There’s no one here that has any background before 1990. Most of the people I work with won’t believe me when I tell them people used to get shot if they tried to go between East and West Berlin.”
“Yeah, I know,” said Hurtree. “I had my old uniform cleaned the other day and the girl at the dry cleaners asked me about all the ribbons. When I told her most of them came from the Second World War she looked at me like I was an alien. Would you believe she thought that the war was fought in Korea? Do these kids go to school at all?”
“Tell me about it. I had to arrest a kid from El Paso the other day for drug abuse. He didn’t even know the name of the President,” said Peters. “His own fucking Commander in Chief.”
“OK, so what’s up? I’ll help you if I can. Tell me you can buy me a ticket to Munich and I’ll stay until the end of Oktoberfest if I can. I can’t drink American beer anymore.”
“I need someone with personal knowledge to identify an ex-Stasi agent – he’s important to a case we’re working on. His codename was Schneller. Remember him?”
“All too well,” said Hurtree. “I tried to follow him once and discovered I was the one being followed. He just led me around Berlin until he had me so open and exposed there was nothing else I could do except smile and be happy. I felt like a fool, Charlie. Schneller used to organise Stasi agents up in Scandinavia. He was a minnow then and he must be getting on in years today. So, what can I help you guys with? You already know almost everything there is to know.”
“Yeah, but I don’t have enough boots in the snow to do what I need to do. I’m restricted by protocol to one point of contact in Sweden, and that point is in the Swedish Security Service. From what we can figure out, Schneller’s address is in Sweden and I can’t send one of my ordinary guys up there. Hell, I can’t even contact our own CIA office at the embassy. Sweden still isn’t a NATO country and they wouldn’t like us meddling. You, on the other hand, aren’t officially anything except a retired army cop, and if you get caught snooping around you can always fake Alzheimer’s. Shit, John, in your case you probably won’t even have to fake it.”
“Sorry, you said something about Alzheimer’s, but I can’t remember what you said.”
“I said screw you, Hurtree. Are you interested or not? I can arrange for you to get a seat on a MATS plane next week, and you get to use the PX if you want to buy Christmas presents. As far as expenses go, I’ll arrange for you to teach a course in Swahili or something here at the base for two weeks without any students. If you can’t do it in two weeks it can’t be done at all. What do you say?”
“The only word I know in Swahili is ‘Bwana’ – you know, from the Tarzan movies. I wonder how you say ‘Oktoberfest’ in Swahili?” said Hurtree. “Can’t you arrange for me to start in Munich for a couple of days before it ends?”
“If you went to Oktoberfest, what makes you think you’ll still be alive at the end of it?” asked Peters. “Anyway, Oktoberfest ended already, so you’ll have to wait until next year.”
“You can send me there as a mummy. German beer has rejuvenating properties.”
“Get over here first and we’ll see what happens. I’ll give you the details when you get here. You can take your flight out of McQuire Air Force Base – you know where the MATS terminal is. I’ll send your flight details to your email. I won’t be able to get you directly into Heidelberg so you’ll have to take some kind of land transport from Rhein-Main Air Base.”
“But that’s going to take me over six hours before I can get there,” said Hurtree.
“It’ll take a lot longer if you have to walk. Your choice,” said Peters.
*
John Hurtree started packing for another European trip. He hoped he’d be able to spend some time in Stockholm with the people he’d met when he’d been there before, especially Homicide Inspector Sara Markham.
Halfway into the packing he dug out a small blue spiral notebook from a box in the closet and leafed through it until he came to a page where the name Schneller appeared at the top. He sat on the bed, refreshing his memory about a Polish-born Swedish man who used to provide the East German Security Police, the infamous Stasi, with information about disarmament activities from all over Europe, but especially Swedish government policies.
Hurtree’s notes described the exterior of a man who was normal in almost every respect: middle-aged, brown hair with touches of grey, average height, normal weight and excellent distance vision, but who used glasses when he read documents.
It was on the inside that Schneller was different. Not even Hurtree knew Schneller spoke five European languages fluently, and could choose between local dialects at will. Schneller’s body looked average when clothed in his brown corduroy trousers and tan sweater, but under those clothes the power of his muscles could be concentrated to allow him to do one-handed push-ups.
He’d become a member of MENSA as a teenager, and solved crossword puzzles flawlessly using a ballpoint pen after first studying the entire puzzle for only ten minutes.
Schneller had placed eleventh in the Paris, Berlin and Stockholm marathons in 1983, and done it on purpose to avoid the attention publicity would have generated. He’d stopped running in front of cameras when reporters started to ask him embarrassing questions before the start, but he still worked out every day, ending his sessions with a run of at least five miles. He’d never married, but he was no stranger to female companionship and was often sought for a second time among those women who ended up spending the night with him. He had few weaknesses, and he worked hard to keep them from becoming public.
His most debilitating fault was a cruel streak which could suddenly appear during a mission. When provoked, this cruelty caused him to spend unnecessary time during operations, and several times he had been dangerously close to bein
g exposed. He had very photogenic legs, and when he had to use a disguise he almost always dressed as a woman. When operations required him to quickly obtain other people’s confidence he usually dressed as a Lutheran clergywoman.
Chapter 9
Sara was dialling before she sat down at her desk, and did a quick survey of its surface while waiting for the Malmö Police Department to answer. Hagman had left a note to say that Spimler’s wife had called about something found while going through her husband’s things. That would be her next call. The investigator from Violent Crimes in Malmö answered in the near-Danish dialect of the south. After two attempts, Sara finally understood the simple answer to her question. They hadn’t picked up Lemko because he wasn’t there. A patrol car had been to his country house twice and no one was answering the door.
“We don’t have the resources to do any more,” the investigator told her.
“I want him picked up.” Sara tried to sound as if the world would end if it didn’t happen.
“It’s been raining down here for a week, a complete deluge. We couldn’t see a single indication that anyone has been there since the rain started. Not a single tyre track in the mud, no one collecting the mail, no one leaving garbage – just what appears to be an empty house. But we’ll get right on it,” was the response.
Sara knew she’d have to make a trip to the south if she wanted it to happen. She called Spimler’s wife, who told her about the brochure she’d found with the word in the Russian alphabet. Sara asked her to fax it first, then send it by registered mail if she could.
She went back to the Hoffberg room to check with the rest of the team. Dan and Robert were working through piles of documents.
“What’s happening?” she asked.
“Spimler seems to have gone up in smoke,” said Dan. “He isn’t using his credit card, and there’s no sign of him since his boat was found. To tell you the truth, I think he’s either left the country or is dead.”
“I don’t care if he’s dead or alive.” Sara raised both arms in the air. “We’ve got to find either his ass or his ashes. We have to get him off the list, and I mean right now. Have you found any connection between him and Lemko? Maybe they’re together.”
“Lemko seems to be a blank page.” Robert dropped his eyes to read from his report. “Our records indicate he was born in Poland. Arrived in Sweden from Germany, one day after his birth, January 1st 1959, with his birthplace given as a village bombed out of existence during the war. Since then he’s lived in the house near Trelleborg and we can find nothing more. He’s never had a job, never been ill, never been to school – just one of those nobodies who seems to be able to exist in our system without ever attracting attention.”
“Does he pay taxes?” Sara asked. “That, if anything, would attract some kind of attention if he didn’t.”
“He never reported any income so there are no income tax records. Ever. No indication he was ever investigated by the local tax authorities,” Robert continued. “And his Volvo’s never had as much as a parking ticket. The invisible man.”
“Certainly not very visible for us yet.” Sara gave a deep sigh. “You said he lives in a house. How did he pay the taxes on that?”
“I’m looking into it. All I can say so far is they were always paid, so no one was ever interested in how before.”
“Does he have a Swedish passport?”
“Not according to the passport authority, at least not one made out in his name.”
“Do we have a picture of this guy? Anything?”
“No. Nothing.”
“Crap,” said Sara. “You can’t live in Sweden for that many years and not leave some kind of trace. There has to be something somewhere. What about his person-number? That should at least give us something.”
“Yeah,” said Robert, “now there’s something strange for you. We’re assuming Kim is a man, even though there are both men and women with that name. The odd thing is, his person-number indicates a woman. The identifier in the ninth digit is for females. Either someone made an error when he got here, or she turned out to be a he when it came time to shave.”
An image of a dark-haired woman in a clerical collar flashed into Sara’s mind. “You’re sure about that?”
“Absolutely. I checked it out myself using the algorithm they taught us in school,” said Robert.
“But his or her driver’s licence? An error like that would have been picked up by our system immediately. You can’t say you’re a man and have a woman’s person-number,” she said.
“He or she doesn’t have a driver’s licence,” said Robert. “At least not a Swedish licence.”
“And you don’t have to have a driver’s licence to own a car in this crazy country.” Sara shook her head. “But the insurance for the car – is he driving uninsured?”
“He’s the registered driver, but not the registered owner. It’s a special form of registration for foreign companies,” said Robert, “or embassies.”
“And?”
“The company that owns the car is in Estonia: Teknologikka. They pay the insurance.”
“Well, Mr Lemko, jump to the front of the suspect queue. Good work, Robert. Now how about you calling this company, Teknologikka, in Estonia? Find out more about their employee, Kim Lemko, who lives in Sweden.”
“I tried.” Robert looked a little hurt that Sara had not assumed this already had been done. “No one answers, and our embassy in Tallinn says the company filed for bankruptcy last year.”
“Great. We have a company which doesn’t exist paying the insurance on a car we can’t find, and the driver, who’s our suspect, could be either a man or woman. The only thing we’re certain of is that whoever we’re looking for has gone up in smoke. No, the only thing we’re certain of is that a man has been murdered. Maybe we ought to look in the morgue again, just to be sure our victim is still there.”
Sara knew it was time for her to peel off the outer layer of her existence. She needed to get hooked up to the giant spider web of her awareness, the tool she could rely on to help her solve the most difficult cases. She knew there was a risk she’d become a victim of the scientific devices of criminology, fooled into thinking she was in control.
When she was meditating, she could relax into the certainty that she was just a wood chip floating in the dark current of fate. Sara needed to still the ranting of logic for a few minutes and listen to the whispering of her soul. There would be answers there if she could only find the wisdom and time to listen.
Tonight she’d address the central question plaguing her right now, and let the universe answer it for her. She began to feel impatient; it was too early to leave yet. Her telephone saved her from risking her job by playing hooky.
“Sara?”
“Grandma, I told you I can’t talk to you when I’m at work.”
“Sara, I’m very ill. I don’t think I’ll live longer than the weekend. I can’t use the toilet, I can’t walk, I can barely see and I can’t hear you unless you shout. I need your help.”
“I don’t know what I can do. I’m not a doctor. Wait, I have a friend who’s a doctor, maybe she can help.”
“There are doctors all over the place here, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t think doctors are the answer anymore. All they do is prescribe pills and then I get allergic to the pills, so they prescribe other pills to treat the allergies. Do you know how many pills I take every day?”
“Grandma—”
“Fourteen, I take fourteen pills every day. Four at each meal and two when I go to bed.”
“I’m really sorry I can’t help you right now. Can I call you later?”
“All you think about is work. You’ll wake up one of these days and discover the world isn’t only work. There are people out there, Sara, people who need you. Help me, please.”
“I’ll call the head of the nursing home as soon as I have a chance, I promise.” Sara hoped she wouldn’t forget. Being the favourite granddaughter had been great wh
en she was growing up and she hoped she’d still be a favourite in the future, but odds were stacking up against it.
That old American a few years ago, Hurtree, he doesn’t wring his hands at every pain in his back and he’s at least as old as Grandma. Maybe it’s the Guinness he drinks, or his habit of walking all over the place. Maybe some people never have time to get old.
*
John Hurtree pulled his passport from his jacket pocket and showed it to the woman behind the customs window in the airport in Mannheim. He thought he recognised her, and she seemed to find a negative memory to connect with when she stared at him and looked again at his picture on the passport.
“And why are you coming to Germany?” she asked, in a voice that had a metallic echo.
“A holiday.” Hurtree stared back at her leaden face.
“And how long will that be?”
“I suppose about three weeks,” said Hurtree.
“Do you have a return ticket?”
“Yes.”
“Show it to me, please.” She smiled a tight smile as Hurtree finally fished it out of his hand luggage. She looked at it; glanced up to examine his face twice.
Hurtree turned his head to the line behind him, impatiently growing much longer than all the other lines.
I’m sure it’s the same bitch that screwed with me last time. Very thorough, as usual.
Hurtree looked back at her through the glass window, put on his friendliest face.
“You may enter the EU for a period not to exceed three weeks.” She hit his passport with a stamp, leaving an impression at least as deep as the last time she’d done it. “And you may not work while you are here.”
“Thank you so much for reminding me.”
“And you may not access the social services or hospitals during your visit,” she said, reading with her mind’s eye the page of instructions which had formed the core of her working life. She kept Hurtree’s passport on her side of the glass window until he looked up at her. “You will have to use your own private insurance for any medical emergencies.” She slowly returned the passport through the small opening in the glass window, staring Hurtree in the eye the entire time.
