Jenny gestured toward Sebastian, but Carl-Adam simply repeated what he always said: “Let’s try to keep him cool, and we’ll give him a little more water later.” The first attack had been minor, the next one more serious. They were living in a sauna, and Jenny, who had a constant headache, couldn’t cut back any more on her own ration. She feared that she’d pass out and then be unable to protect the children. She still followed them when they went to the toilet, and she counted the few tablets they’d brought with them from the boat for Sebastian. They’d run out of one of his medications, and of the second, there was only a week’s worth left in the bottle.
19
Ernst Grip received a short email from Didricksen. Help was on the way. He was given a flight number and a name: Simon Stark.
Shit, a complete noob. The guy had just joined the bodyguard detail, and Grip had only worked with him once or twice. He’d done a couple of routine jobs for the royal family, but beyond that, Grip had barely exchanged three words with him. He had nothing special against Simon Stark, but that was the problem: the guy was a blank slate. Grip didn’t know whether he’d be getting a deadbeat or a dynamo.
Didricksen must have known that his choice wouldn’t make Grip happy. In his email, he closed with a comment that was unlike him, something probably meant to justify his decision: Good guy, understands uniforms. But don’t ask him to run errands, he can’t. Grip had no idea what it meant.
Simon Stark landed in the afternoon. Grip was waiting in the small arrival hall, just as Mickels had done before. He carried a big shapeless duffel in one hand, and he looked pasty from the long flight and the wall of heat.
“Welcome. The car is right outside.”
Stark had wavy blond hair and the short, stocky build of a welterweight boxer. His hair was a little long for Grip’s taste, but he was handsome. And there was something restless about him. His cheek muscles bulged like plums—he must grind his teeth in his sleep, Grip thought. One shirt pocket looked like a miniature office, holding his passport, a stack of notes, and a pen.
They’d only been driving for a minute, and the car had just begun to cool off, when Stark rubbed his face as if he’d just woken up in the morning and said: “Right. So I was up with this Didricksen yesterday, and he said you’d annoyed everyone in the military down here.”
Grip laughed. “He told you that, huh. What else did he say?”
“Well, not much more. That you needed my help. This is about the lieutenant, right, the one who was on the news about a week ago?”
“Exactly, that one.” Grip waited a few seconds. “Didricksen, was that the first time you’d gone up to see him?”
“I’d never laid eyes on him before.”
“And how long did you say you’ve been with our bodyguard detachment?”
“I didn’t say, but three months.”
“And how long total, as a police officer?”
Simon Stark turned and looked at Grip. “It wasn’t my idea to come here. But if you really want to know, I’ve been on the police force for a year and a half.” He leaned back again. “When I left the military, I was a newly appointed captain in the army.”
“Okay, great. Just so you know, out here, we don’t call Didricksen by name. He’s just the Boss.”
Police—Säpo—bodyguards: an ascent that took little more than a year. Possibly a record. Someone probably had their eyes on Simon Stark, and he didn’t even realize it himself. Grip had seen the way Didricksen singled out and stole officers for the bodyguard detachment, which could spare people for his improvised missions. He wouldn’t be tearing someone away from a high-level investigation, only replacing a guy who herded ministers with a yawn, wearing sunglasses and an earpiece. No fucking way Didricksen had just mumbled something about angry soldiers and tossed Stark a plane ticket with a few instructions. Grip needed help, but in return the Boss wanted total control, now that the foreign minister had his eye on Abdoul Ghermat, and some general had come from headquarters complaining about Grip’s rampage.
Grip already assumed that the Boss recorded and saved their phone calls. Now he’d probably be sent reports as well, and it would all be done behind Grip’s back. That was the way things worked. If von Hoffsten or Skantz had come down, they would have mostly followed Didricksen’s instructions but still done what Grip wanted. Didricksen knew that, so instead he’d sent Simon Stark, a new guy who’d trade total loyalty for a career move and some adventure. Grip couldn’t object; he’d been exactly like that himself. And he knew that for Didricksen, Grip himself was still the man whose ass was on the line, the one expected to make things happen. His confidence wasn’t shaken; Didricksen just wanted more information. That’s how it was, and that was Didricksen’s personality. Simon Stark was as much Grip’s badly needed backup as he was the microphone in the room. He was an added variable in the equation, and also, for Grip, a reminder to watch his back. They’d left the downtown and were driving along the coast up to the Kempinski.
“The Boss said that I wasn’t supposed to use you to run errands,” Grip said, after a moment of silence.
“Didn’t he say, to run in general?”
“Maybe, but what would that mean?”
“Run, literally.”
“I’m not exactly tracking your exercise routine, so why would the Boss mention such a thing? Are you lazy or something?”
“I can’t run. I can barely jog. My legs are shot to hell.”
“But you made the bodyguard unit?”
“I told them about it, when they asked me to apply for the job.”
Didricksen, Grip thought. He would give a guy in a wheelchair the job, if he thought he offered something valuable.
“An accident,” Stark explained. He held his chin in his hand and leaned his elbow against the side, as if tired of the question that always came up. “A few years ago, before I joined the police force.”
As they passed through the gates of the Kempinski, he lightened up and whistled.
“Oh yes,” said Grip, “this is where we live. One Thousand and One Nights.”
Simon Stark checked in, took a while to get settled in and shower after his trip, and then met Grip in his room for a crash course on Djibouti. Stark was thrown right in: Slunga at the shooting range, the Djiboutians high on khat, Mickels’s report, the arrest of Abdoul Ghermat, and everything that had happened since Grip arrived. Hansson’s word against Radovanović’s confession, and Grip’s sense that something else was going on. Grip showed Stark the note that had been slipped under his door.
“So you did something ballsy,” Stark said. He meant the kidnapping of Radovanović.
“We have the right to question him, that’s what we’re doing.”
“Trapped in a hotel room for more than a week, isn’t that . . . a little much?”
Grip shut his mouth before shooting back something stupid. Just arrived, and the guy had the nerve to say something like that, sneering. He figured Simon Stark still could afford to play the moralist. And if he’d zeroed in on the most vulnerable part of the investigation, from the short time they’d been talking, well, at least he wasn’t stupid. The situation with Radovanović was just that—a little much.
“It’s what was needed,” Grip said, adding: “The alternative was a bunch of women shrieking when Ghermat was carried out from the jail covered by a sheet, and then a lot of headlines in Sweden. Would you have liked that better?”
He got a shrug in reply. Maybe Simon Stark would decide to wait a day or two before calling the Boss, giving his first report on the reality of the situation.
Colonel Frères had called that morning, again. Polite as usual, but now also slightly uneasy. Grip got it exactly, that although the colonel didn’t object, both his police officers were sick of sitting on the balcony of the Hotel Mirage, babysitting for the Swedish police. It was time to act, before the French also started questioning the arrangement.
“Tomorrow morning, you’ll head over there and stay until noon, so the Fren
ch can get a day off,” Grip said, and Stark nodded. “We can’t keep him there much longer.”
“Sounds reasonable,” Stark said. He sat and leafed through the documents Grip had left on the table, not least the files on the MovCon members. “Hey, Philippa Ekman, I know her,” he said, after looking at an open file for a while. “We were on the same rotation in Affe.”
“Affe?”
“Afghanistan. We were in the same unit.”
“So now I have one on my own team. Did you have the beard and shit as well?”
“I only grew a beard the first time. They live at the Sheraton, huh?”
“Do you want to see her?”
“I wouldn’t exactly mind looking her in the eye—to see if anything has changed since last time. She’s tough, though.”
“They all are,” Grip said, “except Radovanović. They’re in their own little world. We can head out there tomorrow after you’re done at the Mirage.”
“Why not now?”
This was the impatient Simon Stark that Grip had already seen at the airport.
“Sure, why not,” Grip replied, giving in. He looked at the clock.
But Stark had already made his own plan. “I can go to the Sheraton after we’ve had lunch. It can’t be that hard to find.” He looked at Grip, who was thinking he’d drive over and have a beer at the bar while Stark sized up the situation.
Then he understood. “You’re thinking that Ernst Grip has crossed lines and pissed off everyone in uniform, and you can’t risk being seen with him when you show up as an old friend?”
“Something like that.”
“Go solo, then. You might as well relive old memories and tell some war stories on your first night in Djibouti. No, it’s not hard to find the Sheraton. Show them your stuff.”
20
“Check your in-box,” said the text message from Simon Stark the next morning. He was guarding Radovanović at the Hotel Mirage while Grip went through his notes at the Kempinski.
Grip logged in. Stark’s note read: “Take a look at this,” with an email he’d forwarded. It was a photo of everyone posing for the camera, that day at the shooting range. The jumble of soldiers, Djiboutians, and weapons.
“Notice the laser sight,” it said under the picture. Yes, one AK-5 had a laser sight mounted on the barrel. Not much bigger than a cigarette lighter. It was the only weapon that had one, and it was held by a Djiboutian looking proud. A laser sight projects a little dot showing where the bullet will hit, so you don’t even have to lift the weapon to aim. Just by watching the little dancing dot, you can place a 5.56-millimeter hole precisely where you want it.
The laser sight email was signed by Philippa Ekman. From the time stamp, Grip could see that she’d sent the picture to Stark an hour before. So Simon Stark must have gotten somewhere when he’d sat and reminisced about Afghanistan with her the night before.
Philippa was in the photo herself, her braid hanging over her shoulder. She was the only woman there.
“Whose weapon was that?” Grip texted back to Stark.
“I asked, got no answer,” he replied.
“Better if it goes through you. But can you arrange for me to meet with her?”
“I’m on it.”
Early in the afternoon came the reply: “Tonight at 8—Kempinski.”
At first, he didn’t recognize Philippa Ekman. Stark was walking with her in the lobby, that’s how he knew it was her. Her hair was down, and she was wearing jeans—that metamorphosis women soldiers undergo when they change into civilian clothes. The baggy uniform gone, and always something about the hair.
“Hi,” he said.
She nodded in reply and looked around cautiously. In the lobby of the Kempinski, a blond young woman would automatically attract a dozen glances. That she could handle, but he saw that she was afraid of being seen. Someone might notice her talking to the police.
“Follow me,” Grip said, and headed out back toward the pool. It was dark and nearly empty, just the comforting light of the still water, and a lonely figure putting away the last things for the night. Grip nodded to Stark, who put an extra bill on the counter and got three glasses of beer. Stark took a seat at the bar, and Grip and Philippa sat down across from each other, on wooden deck chairs. Grip drank his beer, but Philippa hesitated. He waited her out.
“The laser sight was on Fredrik’s gun,” she said, taking a sip.
“Hansson?”
“Yes.” The only sound was the humming of the pump, sucking in pool water. “He had it when I went out to the shooting range with him the first time, to calibrate it. That was the week before we went with the Djiboutians and . . . yes.”
“Does anyone else in your unit use a laser sight?”
“No, didn’t you see the photo? Just him.”
“How come?”
“In Afghanistan, almost everybody uses them, at least in the platoons out in the field.”
“Ah,” said Grip.
“But here,” she said, “we’re part of MovCon, we keep our AK-5s in a cabinet. You work on the base, you live in a hotel. In Djibouti, it’s not exactly about ambushes and rapid response, in case you haven’t noticed. Off the base, a gun is good enough. A laser sight is overkill.”
On the other side of the pool, the bartender pulled down the last of the shutters and walked away. Simon Stark had turned around on his stool and was gazing out toward the lights down the beach.
“Why are you telling me this?” Grip asked.
“Fredrik calibrated his laser sight, and no matter what anyone says, he was the one pushing Slunga to arrange that idiotic excursion.”
“Why did he bring you along the first time? Why didn’t he just go himself?”
“Ask him, he always plays his little loyalty games. He pretends to be your friend, but he’s really up to something else.”
“Okay. But maybe you and he have been more than just friends.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Just a hunch, and maybe the fact that you call him Fredrik, not Hansson.”
She looked back over her shoulder toward Simon Stark.
“He can’t hear us,” Grip said.
She drummed cautiously on her beer glass before she answered. “A few months ago we were. It’s a mission, people find each other and then they drift apart again. It works. Maybe not everyone understands.”
“I think I have a pretty good idea. Something about love and war.”
“Love, not so much. It’s more about having someone there, a body to hold at night.”
“And now?”
“Like I said, people drift apart. We haven’t been seeing each other for at least a month.”
She gave Grip a long look. “And now you’re wondering why I’d rat on my lover?”
“A natural question—maybe jealousy?” he asked. She shook her head.
“It was Fredrik who got Slunga to arrange the excursion. But you seem to have locked in on Radovanović.” Philippa Ekman was obviously annoyed. “Why did you take him in?”
“Radovanović confessed, saying he fired accidentally.”
“Right, that’s what he’s saying now. But I’m wondering why you detained him in the first place?”
“Is Hansson trying to protect Radovanović?”
“Fredrik just does things for his own advantage,” Philippa said. “And he kept pushing to make the shooting range happen, and to let the Djiboutians come along, and for Slunga to arrange it all.”
“Okay, but Radovanović still says he fired by accident.”
“You think that Fredrik and Radovanović cooked something up together?” she said, laughing artificially. “Jesus, you’ve seen Radovanović, you’ve been with him, he has zero self-confidence. Fredrik would never get mixed up with him.” She was going to take a sip of her beer but stopped. “Now I’ve given you something. So, why did you take in Radovanović, just like that? I don’t get it.”
“You might as well answer the question yourself.”
>
“Why, then?”
“You people in MovCon have hung out together for a long time, in your own little world, doing things exactly the way you want. I needed to shake things up and get something besides the stories you rehearsed.”
“And now you’ve got the confession you needed. You hit his weak spot, and he caved.”
“So, what do you think really happened?”
“I stood there at the front, taping over a couple of holes, and then, bam. No, I don’t know, I didn’t see. But if you’d been there, you’d have noticed the strange atmosphere, and that was long before a single shot was fired. Something was going to happen, everyone felt it.” She looked away. “Sure, maybe I didn’t care as much about Abdoul Ghermat as I should have, but Radovanović deserves better.” She fiddled with her bracelet and stretched her back, as if she wanted to stand up after saying a little too much.
Grip felt he should encourage her and try to get more. But he didn’t really know what to say. He realized he had to pick sides.
“Please stay,” Grip said, at the same time realizing how awkward that would be, “or else have a beer with Stark at the bar here. And no matter what he says, charge it to my room, 804. In the meantime, I’ll just . . . go check on something.”
21
Grip’s hunch was right. Mickels was the type who often spent evenings at his desk. He took a long look at Grip when he came in the door of the military police barracks, as if measuring him up before a showdown. No one else would be in the building.
Mickels was still impatient. A short breath, then in a loud voice: “Was it you who got Ghermat released?”
“It was the foreign minister who made it happen, but he certainly heard my opinion.”
“But it’s Radovanović that you’re detaining? The legal staff . . .”
“If it matters,” interrupted Grip, “you should know that Milan Radovanović confessed to an accidental discharge.”
“What do you mean?”
“I have a written confession that he shot Per-Erik Slunga.”
After the Monsoon Page 14
