The Magdalena File

Jon Stenhugg

© Jon Stenhugg 2017

Jon Stenhugg has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

First published by Endeavour Press Ltd in 2017.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

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Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.

Benjamin Franklin

Part 1

Chapter 1

Leo Hoffberg sipped his coffee and puzzled over the bass voice of the woman sitting in front of him.

The Lutheran minister sitting opposite him stroked a thick, black shock of hair coiffed in a pageboy style. “I’m new to the area, and I’m so interested in your work for the peace movement.”

Leo’s voice seized up before he could reply. He put his cup on the table and brought his hand to his throat, then lost control of his arm and it dropped to his side. He stared with unblinking, wide open eyes as the minister removed his wig, placed it in a plastic bag and put on a pair of rubber gloves. He removed a roll of fibreglass tape from his pocket and bound Leo’s arms behind the back of the kitchen chair, then his legs. The minister tipped the chair and used it as a dolly to drag Leo from the kitchen to the garage.

Leo suspected the Swedish government would respond with something like this. A scare tactic to make him reveal the location of the weapon. He found it odd that their reaction had come so quickly, but it didn’t matter. All he had to do was to keep quiet, wait for them to yield to his demands and within two weeks he’d finally have the power he knew he was entitled to.

His own strained breathing filled Leo’s senses. He stared as his captor took an extension cord from the electric lawn mower. He heard the cord being clipped. One of the leads scratched the skin on his neck, and the question from behind came soon after.

“Where is it?”

Leo opened his mouth with difficulty. The drug in his body slurred his voice, but the meaning was clear. “Fuckou.”

His neck muscles convulsed in a painful jerk just before darkness enveloped his mind. Then the hazy return to consciousness. Leo winced at the sharp pain in his neck when he tried to turn his head.

The figure dressed in black leaned towards his face and repeated the question again in a low, determined voice. “Where is it?”

Leo eyes watered, but he could still see the door leading to the kitchen; he was still in his well-kept garage, just west of Stockholm. The smell of his own burned flesh filled his nostrils. His muscles pulsated with each electric shock, and he tasted the blood oozing from his tongue.

He was certain the torture would soon have to stop. They couldn’t kill him; they needed him to find what he had hidden. He tried to laugh, but it caught in his throat.

The man behind him asked again, this time louder. “Where is it?”

Leo’s throat was dry, and he swallowed twice before he could answer. “Fuck you.”

He smiled and waited for the shock to tear into his mind again. He didn’t have to wait long. A quick muscle spasm in his neck was replaced by swarms of whirling red and green dots of light just before his heart stopped beating.

*

Leo was wrong. It wasn’t his own government reacting to his threatening letter.

The murderer felt for a pulse on Leo’s neck, but got none.

Damn. Screwed up.

He flipped Leo’s chair to the floor and began heart massage. After minutes without success, he turned to the workbench behind him and found the cardboard box his contact had promised would be there. He reached inside to grab the revolver, shaking his head in disbelief that he could have been so stupid, then put two bullets into Leo’s lungs.

The garage suppressed the deafening roar of the shots for anyone outside. He put the gun back into the box, adjusted his clerical collar, refastened the black wig, then made sure he’d left nothing behind. He went back through the kitchen, washed the coffee cups and left the house via the back door. He walked quickly to his car, muttering complaints to himself. Leo’s murderer had now become a man hunted by many people. The least of his worries were the Swedish police.

*

The blood on Leo Hoffberg’s chest had already congealed into two dark red, clotted pools when Sara Markham, Homicide Investigator at Sweden’s National Bureau of Investigation, stood in front of his body. There was a blue blowfly crawling around the stain on Hoffberg’s crotch, drawn to the odour of the fluids escaping from his body as his muscles relaxed.

Sara walked around the chair, taking pictures with her digital camera, careful to include the dusty floor in each view. The smell of gunpowder blended with burned flesh – not her favourite barbeque. There was black gunpowder residue around the entry wounds in Hoffberg’s chest. He’d been shot from close up, a personal act.

Sara noticed an electrical cable was plugged into a socket on the wall. It lay like a long, black snake coiled on the floor, ending with bare leads close to Leo’s body, and there were several white marks on his neck and ears where the leads had been used to give him shocks. She couldn’t see any shell casings, but they might have rolled out of sight under the cabinets and shelves at the end of the garage. The wizards from Forensics would fill her in when they were done. As she took the final shots of the workbench, her cell went off again, and she winced as she saw the caller ID.

“Sara, it’s Mats.”

“Hello, Mats. I’m busy.”

“You’re always busy. I just thought I might take you out to dinner tomorrow evening if you have time. We could repeat the disaster I caused last week.”

“No, last week was the last disaster for us. Please don’t call again.” Sara switched off her phone. When she had time she’d put the budding and very boring doctor’s phone number on a denial list so she wouldn’t have to be bothered with answering his calls, or be reminded of his gruesome and detailed descriptions of life in the county morgue.

Sara’s sex life had been giving her few pleasures lately, and she was beginning to wonder if her lack of success in meeting Mr Right was connected to her job. Her solution so far had been to work even harder, immersing herself in the ugliness of the everyday routines of work.

She went from Hoffberg’s garage back into the kitchen. The police officer from the patrol boat was sitting on a kitchen chair, fidgeting with some of the equipment on his belt.

“What time did you get here?” she asked, and added before he could answer, “You must be starved. Is there a place where we can order pizza or hamburgers near here?”

The officer rose from the chair and took out his pen and notebook. “I’ll take care of it right now. What would you like?”

She let him use her car to drive to the central attraction in Stallarholmen, the grill kiosk; the hub of this village of sixteen hundred souls.

She stood in the kitchen, waiting for the officer to return with their meals. The forensic team was busy trying to finish with a fatal wife-beating in southern Stockholm and it would be several hours before they could be at the scene.

Sara looked around. A modern house with the latest kitchen appliances, all made of stainless steel. The refrigerator door was cluttered with magnets holding family photographs, notes about choir meetings, and an article clipped from a Stockholm newspaper several years ago about the sinking of the MS Sally. Sara wondered if the victim had lost a loved one when the ferry went down. Like almost everyone in the police force she’d lost a very good friend; for Sara it was a judo instructor, the man who had given her the nickname which had stuck since then: Terrier. She’d been careful not to bite judo instructors to get out of a hold after that.

She walked over to the sink and noted that there were two empty coffee cups lying there; it looked like they’d been washed. She looked out the window above the sink. The lawn was neatly cut, dotted with small floral arrangements that spoke of considerable talent in landscaping. Beyond the lawn and the flowers there was a picture-postcard view of the channel leading from Stallarholmen to Stockholm, Kolsundet, the surface of the lake marred only by a breeze rippling the channel towards Stockholm.

The home was nice, comfortable – the kind of place where you’d expect to find a politician living. Sara wondered if she’d ever be able to live like this. She’d saved for nearly two years to afford the down payment on her own studio apartment in Sundbyberg, just north of Stockholm, and the bank payments on the loan were costing her as much as the condo fee every month, leaving her with just enough for her car payments and a very lean diet.

She heard the sound of a car on the gravel driveway outside, and looked through the other kitchen window to see her Peugeot approaching.

*

They sat in Sara’s car for the fast food supper.

“You can call me Burger,” he said between bites, “Everyone else does.”

He was far older than Sara, and had served enough time in the city to merit moving out to one of the best jobs to be found in the force, a member of the Maritime Police patrol. He was clearly not unhappy to be able to share a meal with her, and she noticed him stealing looks at her breasts. She didn’t think he needed the extra two hamburgers he’d ordered for himself.

“So why were you the one to respond?” She adjusted her jacket to cover her chest.

“I was in the area,” he said. “A guy went missing this afternoon while he was fishing. A helicopter spotted the boat in the centre of Stockholm a few hours ago. I was trying to find him from this end. Was just about to talk to his wife when I got diverted here. He lives just across the channel.”

“What happened to him?” asked Sara.

“Don’t know. Haven’t found him yet. We’ve just got the boat so far. What happened to this guy?”

“So far the only thing we know is he used to be a Member of Parliament. They always get special treatment when something happens to them. Who was here when you arrived? From what I’ve heard, his wife found him.” Sara looked at the rest of her hamburger in distaste and threw it into the paper bag on the floor.

“There wasn’t anyone here except the victim. I was told the wife called it in from a friend’s house nearby.” As he spoke, the officer got a call on his radio. It was from Sven, and he handed the microphone to Sara.

“You’ve turned off your cell phone. Is everything OK?” asked her boss.

“Sorry, Sven. I turned it off to avoid private calls. It is the weekend, you know.”

“Maybe you should get a private cell phone for your private calls, Sara. Turn it on now.”

When she did, he continued, “You’ve obviously met up with the local police officer. How are things progressing?”

“Very preliminary so far,” said Sara. She stepped out of her car to keep the conversation from being overheard. “We’re waiting for the forensic team. The first officer on the scene was on a case nearby, in a patrol boat looking for a man who went missing on the lake earlier today. Will Eskilstuna Homicide be showing up soon?”

“No. The County Police in Eskilstuna were tied up with another murder they got yesterday, so they asked for help. Do what you can for now. The forensic team can’t be there for hours. Secure everything you can before the sun goes down. Use your officer if you have to.”

“I recognised the name of the victim. A real surprise,” said Sara. “I’ve seen him on TV and in the newspapers for years, but to see him murdered like this…I never would have expected it. I guess even a fuzzy environmentalist isn’t immune to murder.”

“Even fuzzy environmentalists can piss someone off. Is the wife back yet?”

“No. She’s at a friend’s house just down the road. I’ll talk to her later. I want to have a look outside the house before it gets dark.”

“Poke around the house too,” said Sven. “With the wife gone it’s a good time to do it. We can’t take anything for granted at this stage. I’ll arrange a place for you to stay out there this evening. Stallarholmen doesn’t have a hotel so it’ll be Mariefred-By-Night for you. Let me speak to the officer.”

Sara opened the car door and handed the phone over to the officer, listening as Sven’s voice harshly told him that he was not to divulge any details of the murder to anyone, and he was not to use his police radio regarding the case for any purpose. All communication would have to be done by cell phone. The lid was on.

Sara walked through the rest of the house while they waited for the forensic team. The house was well maintained, not a magazine out of place. In the bathroom the colour of the shampoo and conditioner bottles matched the tiled walls. There was a matching plastic flower in a white vase on the floor.

Sara’s brunette ponytail was held by a clasp she’d had made, a pair of miniature handcuffs, and she adjusted it before she left the bathroom. The two coffee cups in the sink kept the picture from being perfect. Even the papers clinging to the refrigerator were lined up to some sort of plumb line.

She wondered what someone would think if they came into her own flat right now, and got a mental picture of clothes lying in a heap next to the bed, and a light layer of grime on the kitchen stove which seemed immune to her scrubbing. She got out her digital camera from her backpack to get a picture of the cups. Hopefully there’d be some prints left on them. Looking back towards the garage, she saw that the chair Leo Hoffberg had been sitting on when he’d been killed had come from the kitchen, the drag-marks clearly visible on the kitchen floor. I wonder how strong you have to be to do that?

When Sara got to the bedroom she saw a bed neatly made up and a wardrobe door open, revealing Leo’s clothes. She recognised a brown tweed blazer she’d seen several times when he’d been interviewed on television hanging next to several shirts, all pressed and ready to wear. Leo Hoffberg was well looked after.

Could I ever do that? Be a maid for some guy just because I like what he does to me in the sack? She looked at the shelf above the clothes rack of the walk-in closet, noting a storage box out of place, defying the order surrounding her. She got a picture of it from several angles, but left it in place.

From the bedroom, a door led into a large room with a desk facing a window. Sara looked at the bookshelves lining the walls. There were hundreds of reports stacked neatly on top of each other: environmental papers on one group of shelves; papers on the peace movement on the other.

Leo Hoffberg’s desk was orderly, with small piles of paper aligned to the edge of the desk, each pile designating a function; bank statements, bills to pay, bills stamped paid with a rubber stamp and a date neatly written underneath, a pile of newspaper clippings in chronological order, and a pile of correspondence regarding publication of a research article. The lower desk drawers contained some photos of Leo Hoffberg’s time in Parliament, and the upper drawer had a collection of pens still in their boxes. A glass near the edge of the desk seemed to defy the perfect order, and Sara sniffed it. Whisky. No sign of children, no pictures of kids graduating or smiling into the camera in a sports jersey.

Looks like the Hoffbergs got by without kids. Wonder when I’ll get the courage to have one?

Nothing seemed to suggest a motive for the killing, and Sara left to find the patrol boat officer. Burger was retracing his steps from the beach where he’d left his vessel, looking for signs of anyone coming to the house from the lake. He’d found a single set of footprints from the dock up to the house, coming from the expensive speedboat moored to the dock opposite where he’d tied up his patrol boat. It was the beginning of the Scandinavian autumn and the forensic team would still have several hours of sunlight to perform their test-tube magic.

Sara was standing at the back door as he approached, watching as he carefully used the same path he’d made when he first arrived.

“It looks like someone came in from the boat and approached the house from the back,” he said, pointing in an easterly direction. “There’ll be tracks for a dog to follow if you can arrange a team to get up here. I didn’t see any tracks coming back from the house, so these tracks are either the victim’s or the killer’s. Our killer could still be in the vicinity.”

Sara nodded, and said, “I’ll talk to people around here. I might find someone who saw him get here or leave.”

As she spoke, Burger’s police radio squawked, and they heard Sven’s voice calling into the Central Station from his car. “Central, this is 861, please note the suspected homicide near Stallarholmen was a false alarm.”

“861, this is Central. Status noted. End of transmission.”

The Burger looked at Sara in surprise, then said, “Breadcrumbs for the press, I guess.”

Sara nodded, “It won’t help that poor man in the garage, but it’ll give us a little more freedom if we don’t have to dodge reporters the whole time. Is your boat tied up near here?”

“Yeah, it’s just over there,” he said, pointing directly towards the channel.

“We can’t leave until Forensics gets here. The broadcast on the police radio will keep other units nearby from coming out here, so we’re on our own for the time being. Can you stay, at least until the baggers arrive?”

“Well, it’s the weekend, but sure, I can stay if I’m ordered to.”

“Good,” she said. “Keep the house secure and keep an eye on the boat in case the killer comes back. Try to find out who owns it, if the name is listed in the boat register. I’m going to talk to people around here if I can find anyone at home. Create a tape perimeter around the house all the way back to the boat. If the wife comes back, ask her to sit outside for the time being and call me. Use your cell to talk to me if you have to contact me, and don’t use the police radio for anything regarding this case, OK?”

Burger nodded, then asked, “Your boss asked if he could speak to the Terrier. I guess that’s what they call you in Stockholm.”

“Yes.” Sara looked away for a second, then bared her teeth in jest. “They do.” She smiled at the memory of her departed friend, then asked, “And why do they call you Burger?”

Burger mumbled an inaudible reply.

*

There were only three other houses near the Hoffberg house, all of them summer homes surrounded by a stretch of forest, and all close to the channel. Two of them were unoccupied.

At the third house a young woman with a child on her hip answered the door. She let Sara in. Between shrieks and cries from her other children they were finally able to complete the interview.

Her ten-year old son provided the information Sara needed. He’d been playing in the forest after lunch and had seen a car driving at high speed towards the main road. He was certain it was a dark-coloured Volvo 242, a two-door sedan.

“I know my cars,” he’d said, and Sara saw pride fill his countenance.

Sara asked the boy if he’d seen the licence plate, and he looked down at the rug as he tried to recall the entire scene.

“AEU.”

His mother explained that Sara should probably not make too much of the letters he’d given her – he was having a few problems with reading at school.

“AEU,” the boy repeated, his head down and his voice quiet with determination.

Sara thanked them both, left the house and sat in her car for a few minutes before starting the motor. The dark gravel driveway in front of her was spattered with yellow birch leaves, painting a scene of beauty she had no time to enjoy. She closed her eyes and concentrated on what she’d found so far.

At the police academy, murder was presented as a family disease, and although she’d already investigated more than a dozen violent deaths of a spouse in her short career as a homicide investigator, this crime scene didn’t have the markings of a jealous wife ending an argument by smashing her drunken husband’s head with a frying pan. There seemed to be signs of torture indicating careful planning, but what kind of motive was she looking for? Had the wife been trying to find out the name of a mistress? Was she using electric shocks as a form of punishment for some newly discovered marital transgression? Women weren’t usually sadistic when they put their hubbies to death, Sara had noticed. Then there were the two shots to the chest. The minimal blood spatter from the exit wounds gave her a hint that Hoffberg was already dead from electrocution when he’d been shot.

She remembered a comment by John Hurtree when they’d worked a case together several years ago: “Most women just haven’t got the guts to kill,” he’d said, “but when they do, they usually do a good job of it. They’re usually trying to kill their fathers by proxy, for some horrible thing done to them back in their childhood.”

Was she looking for a psychotic spouse murderer, or just a drugged-crazed lunatic? The crazy ones were sometimes the easiest ones to catch; they’d be bragging to anyone who would listen within a few days, sometimes even posting details on the internet. Sara began to formulate questions for her interview with Hoffberg’s widow, and when her strategy was complete she started her car and followed the driving instructions to the Greens’ house.

*

Sara drove onto the main road towards Stallarholmen, first to the right, then towards Mariefred on the left. She found the address for the neighbour’s house where Kristina Hoffberg was staying. A grey Volvo station wagon was parked near the steps to the porch. They were expecting her, and she made herself comfortable in the living room as they waited for Mrs Hoffberg to emerge from her sedated nap.

Mrs Hoffberg came out of the bathroom after several minutes, her face still wet from the cold water she’d thrown on it. The two women shook hands and sat down.

“First let me say I’m sorry for your loss,” said Sara. “I understand it must have been a terrible shock to see what you saw today, but I need to ask you some questions which will help us find whoever did this to your husband.”

Mrs Hoffberg sobbed when Sara reminded her of what she’d witnessed, but she continued the questioning anyway.

“You can help me by telling me about today. Begin with what happened when you woke up this morning. Tell me everything you can remember.”

Kristina Hoffberg began by describing the day in amazing detail. She could remember the sounds of the birds outside as she ate her solitary breakfast several hours before her husband woke up; the short conversation they’d had about the shopping she would do, mentioning that her husband would be working on a draft of a document which was very important for an environmental organisation, and he’d asked her to stop at the Post Office to pick up some stamps for him.

“It was all so normal,” she said. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“So did you have an argument earlier today?” Sara looked closely at her face, watching for nervous twitches or flinches. There were none.

“Not today,” said Kristina Hoffberg. “He quit his job at Parliament last year. I was against him quitting from the beginning, and I’d made it clear I’d have a hard time accepting the change in lifestyle his decision would bring. His entire career was coming into bloom, and it was stupid for him to quit. But then he threatened divorce, and well, I came to my senses, or maybe I came to his senses. Leo always knew what he was doing. That’s the way he was.”

“Where do you usually shop?” asked Sara.

“There’s a market in Mariefred, but I needed to buy a pair of boots and a jacket for the winter, so I drove to Södertälje this time,” she said. “I had time to stop at the café at the end of the golf course on the way in, and I sat there enjoying the sun for a few minutes.”

“Did anyone see you there?” asked Sara.

“Only the sleazy guy behind the counter. I watched a couple of golfers out on the course outside, but I don’t think they saw me.”

Kristina said she’d answered a call on her cell phone to speak to an old friend. “We used to work together,” she said. “I was a librarian.”

Sara was making notes as fast as she could. Kristina told her that at the height of his career, Leo managed to be appointed to several key committees in the Parliament, mostly connected to his environmental competence and his public notoriety. He was even appointed to the committee which ran the Defence Department.

“Could you tell me a little about what happened when you got home? How did you find him?”

“I left the car door open, and walked to the front door of our house,” she told Sara. “I was mostly thinking about the gravel on the driveway, that we’d soon be making it into an asphalt driveway and walkway to make it easier to remove the snow that’s going to be here soon. I tried the door, but it was locked, which isn’t at all usual for us out here. We always leave it open when we’re at home. Well, I called for Leo, but got no answer. All I could hear was the sound of wind coming down the channel like it does every day. Anyway, I went back to our car, got my purse and used my own house keys to open the front door.” Kristina Hoffberg paused for a minute, her eyes fixed on something far beyond what was in front of her. “It squeaked when I opened it,” she said, “and I was a little irritated about it, and I was going to talk to Leo again.”

“Was the back door locked?” Sara asked.

“No, and I wondered about that – why he’d locked the front door but left the back door unlocked. At first I thought he was getting something from his boat, so I shouted his name. That’s when I went through the kitchen into the garage so I could open the garage door and park the car. That’s when I saw him. I remember screaming out his name again and fainting.”

Kristina Hoffberg looked down at the coffee table for moment, then raised her eyes to look Sara squarely in the eye. “When I came to, I looked at Leo’s body again, and ran into the kitchen. Then I ran back into the garage just to make sure of what I’d seen, and then…and then I ran towards my car. I was afraid whoever had killed Leo might still be there, that I might become a victim too. I drove to our nearest neighbour, and, well, here I am.”

“Is there anyone you can think of who might want to harm your husband?” Sara fixed her eyes on the widow’s face, looking for the slightest flinch.

“No, no, I can’t think of anyone. Leo wasn’t well liked when he was in Parliament, but after he quit he’d barely had contact with any of them.”

Sara’s notes were now several pages long. No detail was too small to be excluded at this stage. She concluded the interview, telling Kristina Hoffberg and the neighbours they were not to speak to anyone else about the murder, and they shouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t hear anything about it on the news yet. She told Kristina it would be better if she could find some other place to stay for at least the next day, since the forensic team would need some free space to work. The neighbours responded before Kristina could, and offered her a room for as long as she needed it. Sara told her she’d be back the following day to continue the interview and left to return to the Hoffberg house.

*

Forensics arrived at seven in the evening, just in time to watch the sun start to drop behind the tops of the dark line of fir trees framing the yard at the back of the house. Sara and the patrol boat officer helped them place markers on the footprints from the dock. The dog team wouldn’t be able to come until the following day, but having a trail to follow might give them a break later on. The team began the painstaking, gruelling work of documenting everything related to the case and spent several minutes outside, covering obvious tracks and other evidence to protect them from any rain which might fall during the night.

Sara went with them to the bedroom and watched as they took down the box from the shelf in the wardrobe. It was empty. She asked them to look for prints on it; to be sure to detail the boat and then demobilise it if they could. She sat at the kitchen table as the forensic team gathered up piles of letters, bills and other correspondence lying on a counter next to the refrigerator, logging them into a database and taking digital photos for later use.

Sara noticed a postcard of the City Hall in Stockholm, a red-brick building with three golden crowns at the top of the tower; a familiar sight to anyone who had ever been to Stockholm.

“Wait,” she said to the young forensic assistant. “I’d like to look at that before you bag it.” The postcard had been postmarked only a week ago from the small harbour town of Trelleborg on the south coast of Sweden, with ferry connections to Poland and Germany. Sara read the brief message: Thanks for the info. Nice to see you at the Rose Garden last Tuesday. S. It was addressed to Magdalena at a box address in southern Stockholm, and had a yellow Post Office sticker redirecting it to the Hoffberg address.

Sara jotted down the particulars from the postcard and asked as she returned it to the assistant, “Did you find any shell casings in the garage?”

“No,” said the assistant, “but we found the two bullets used to make holes in the victim. We think he was already dead when he was shot, if that means anything to you.”

“Yeah, I saw that,” said Sara, “but I’m not sure what it means yet. Passion? Rage? Sadism? It means the killer took the risk of someone hearing two gunshots, but thought it was worth it anyway. Have you got a calibre?”

“We’ll have to do the ballistics when we get back, but I’d say it was a 38. We’ll get something off the powder burns to his shirt, so we might get lucky and be able to identify the cartridges if you ever find the weapon,” the forensic assistant said.

At 9.30 Sara asked if she could leave. Sven had booked her a room for the night in Mariefred, just a few miles away.

*

Sven had arranged a room from a list his administrator had made several years ago, containing the names and telephone numbers of hostels or private persons who had rooms cheap enough to fall into the miserly budget he was forced to work with.

Sara drove into Mariefred and found the bed and breakfast on Strand Way with no trouble; a two-storey house with signs in three windows on the ground floor, all advertising rooms in three languages. Her room was on the ground floor facing the harbour, and a building off to the right that housed a restaurant for the many visitors who came by boat during the summer.

Sara switched on the ten o’clock news as she kicked off her shoes and packed up the overnight case that was always lying in the trunk of her car, a lesson she’d learned early on.

The TV commentator went from international to national news, and the concerned face of the Prime Minister filled the screen as he explained that unfortunately the Parliament Building would have to be evacuated for the coming week to allow a team of exterminators to eliminate an infestation of rodents. Members of Parliament would be given an extra week’s holiday.

Sara grinned as she imagined the comments about parliamentary rats her colleagues at work would be coining after hearing such news, and then the screen shifted to regional events. They flashed some helicopter footage of Stallarholmen, and she could even see the house where her room was located. She felt dismay as she saw an aerial view of the Hoffberg house on the screen, and she assumed that her murder case had made the news already, but was relieved to hear that the newsreader’s comments were about the disappearance which had brought out the patrol boat in the early afternoon. The television cameras zoomed in on the Little Miss Perfect, stranded lengthwise across the channel where Lake Mälaren flowed into the Baltic, next to the House of Parliament.

Her case was safe so far, and she wondered how long they could manage to keep it that way. Sara switched off the television and meditated for half an hour before retiring.

Without meditation everything she did seemed to consist of attempts to beat into a gale-force wind, with a sail that flapped and popped with each gust. The logical methods she was supposed to use to solve crimes gave her the impression of movement and concrete results, but in reality the direction of her efforts was almost always being determined by an undercurrent of circumstances she was barely aware of. This time one of the currents came from abroad.

Chapter 2

Sweden’s Prime Minister sat in his spacious office in Government House in Stockholm, the usual hum of activity now silenced for the weekend. His political secretary stood behind him and they both stared once more at the letter in the PM’s hand. Rays of sunshine gleamed under dark clouds to the west just before sunset, and illuminated a single page of handwritten text.

You rotten bastard! I’m tired of your political tricks to keep the country from seeing the choices open to them, and I’m sick of watching you get rich by secretly supporting the politics of war. I’ve tried and tried to make my voice heard, but you and your friends have managed to keep me silenced, so you think no one cares about my message. Now you and the entire country will be forced to listen. I’ve come across the means to make even you understand the unavoidable choice you have to make. World peace has to be achieved now, and I will make you save the world, and even the House of Parliament, where I’ve planted an explosive device powerful enough to destroy the entire centre of the city, and everyone there. I’ll explain when you get back on Monday morning what steps you’ll have to take to save the city, and your own miserable ass.

The letter lacked a signature.

“How much longer before the man from the National Security Service gets here?” asked the PM, his tone a mixture of irritation and fear. “I want this person identified, apprehended, and this threat neutralised before Monday morning.”

“Just a few more minutes, but can we trust the NSS?” replied the political secretary. “They usually get paid in favours to keep secrets, and I’m thinking this is something we don’t want to read about in the morning papers. Are you sure we don’t know who this guy is? All this crap about world peace makes me think of Leo Hoffberg.”

“How could it be Hoffberg? According to the call from the National Bureau of Investigation, Hoffberg was murdered this morning. No, it can’t be him. Anyway, it’s disturbing that whoever it is put this letter into my own mailbox at the Parliament Building. Maybe the NSS can get some fingerprints, or see something using the security cameras. And how could anyone know I was supposed to be gone for the whole weekend?”

“Your schedule is published on the government webpage,” said the political secretary. “Maybe we should do something about that.”

“Let’s find out where this threat comes from, and if it’s real before we do anything rash,” said the PM, as he dropped the letter back on his desk. “It’s important the voters know what I’m doing. We should be drafting a plan to have the Parliament Building searched for explosive devices without attracting attention. I thought you said the NSS would be here soon? In the meantime we can start some kind of memorial speech for Hoffberg. He should be good for a point or two on the polls if we can get a word in during the news. Have the police let his murder reach the media yet?”

*

That same afternoon, Chief Inspector Lars Ekman, the head of Counter Terrorism, lounged in front of his TV, watching a soccer match between two Spanish teams. The exhilaration of watching a perfect bicycle kick was interrupted when his boss, the head of the NSS, called. Within fifteen minutes he was ushered in through the security doors at Rosenbad Government House, still tucking in his shirt.

The PM’s political secretary met him on the other side of the revolving door. Ekman’s sneakers squeaked on the highly polished linoleum floor as they hurried to the lift, then down the corridor to the unmarked door of the Prime Minister’s office.

Ekman swallowed hard as he finished reading the letter. He looked first at the PM, then the political secretary as he asked, “And you don’t know who this person is?”

“That’s your job,” said the PM, shifting his heavyset body from foot to foot, “and I want an answer quickly.”

“I’ll try,” said Ekman.

“You’ll do it,” said the PM. “I’m moving out to my house in the country until we know more. You have complete run of the Parliament Building – my secretary will assist you.” The PM’s face went beet-red and his shirt collar suddenly seemed two sizes too small. “I want the person who wrote this letter identified, and this threat neutralised. I want it done now!” His fist struck the desk and the sound was like a pistol shot.

“Yes, Prime Minister,” said Ekman, and he and the political secretary left the office.

They ran, dodging puddles left from an early rain that day, heading for the bridge to the Parliament Building on the other side of the small channel of water between the two buildings. Fishermen were casting their lines into the channel, hoping for a salmon, and Ekman wove between groups of tourists busy making video proof they’d visited this beautiful European capital. He began asking questions as they ran, the secretary panting to catch his breath as he answered, “No, I haven’t looked at the security tapes yet. I was waiting for you.”

“Has anyone else handled the letter besides yourself and the Prime Minister?” asked Ekman.

“I don’t know,” wheezed the secretary as they crossed the bridge over to the island where the Parliament Building was located. “It was in his mailbox. Earlier today. When he returned.” The political secretary stopped, bent over as he held his stomach, barely able to speak; then added, “From France. In the basement. I’ll show you. When we get there.”

*

Lars Ekman and the secretary started the video cassette of the camera viewing the mailboxes of the Members of Parliament, sent the security officer out for a long coffee break and watched a long string of unchanging frames.

The secretary was mopping his brow, and sweat stained his shirt. After a few minutes Ekman used the fast forward button and even more unchanging frames rolled by until they saw a figure dressed in a brown windbreaker walk by the PM’s mailbox. He made a quick movement of his right hand to throw an envelope into the mailbox, then continued out of sight of the camera.

“There,” the two men shouted in unison, “that must be him.”

“It was this morning, 9.20,” said the secretary. “We can get the security officer to help us with a list of anyone in the building.”

“Yeah,” said Ekman, his voice hesitant as a question silently formed in his mind. Why doesn’t this guy care about being seen? Then he replied to the secretary, “Talk to security. I’ll have the prints on the letter examined to see if I can get an ID off it. Is there anyone who comes to mind when you see the tape?”

“No,” said the secretary, “no one I can think of. It looked like it was a man, though.”

“Oh, that’ll make it easy,” said Ekman. “And what’s the percentage of women who have access to this building?”

The political secretary turned away from Ekman, noting the irony of his reply, but choosing not to answer the question. “I’ll talk to security. I need your telephone number,” he said before they parted.

*

Chief Inspector Ekman exited the Parliament Building running full-out, crossing the bridge to the other side of the channel. He held up his police ID in front of a number three bus on its way towards City Hall and it squealed to a stop. In less than fifteen minutes he’d be in his own office, which would provide him with shelter from the biting wind blowing off the icy lake outside. He explained to the few passengers that he’d commandeered their bus, and that it wouldn’t stop at its usual stops.

He called the resident forensic scientist as the bus droned up the incline and turned off-route onto Polhem Street, shouting into his telephone that he needed something dusted for prints immediately. The bus flew past the entrance to the NBI, rounding the corner to enter Kungsholm Street, and stopped in front of the unmarked door to the building housing the Swedish National Security Service, the NSS, where he would be given access to several layers of security. He cursed as he felt the pressure of each escaping second.

“Real Madrid one, Barcelona zero,” said the forensic scientist, who knew what Ekman did on Saturdays.

“Prints,” shouted Ekman, “and fast. We have three identified already. The Prime Minister, his political secretary, and my own. If you find any other prints on this letter, identify them if possible. Start with the register for Members of Parliament. I’ll be in my office, warming up and catching my breath.”

Ekman settled into his black leather swivel chair and was flipping through some info clips on Members of Parliament when his cell phone rang. It was the PM’s political secretary, who told him in a terse voice that there was only one person who could have put the letter in the PM’s mailbox, an ex-Minister of Parliament who had told the guards he had a meeting with an Opposition leader, and he was allowed in even though he had no valid ID badge. Leo Hoffberg had only been in the building for a few minutes, and had left in a hurry according to the security guards.

“Well, good.” Ekman looked away from his computer screen. “I’m having the letter checked for prints, and I’ll see if it’s him. When did you say he was an MP?”

“He, uh, resigned right after the last election,” said the political secretary. “But I’m not sure it will help us, even if we can establish it was Hoffberg who left the letter.”

“And why not?” asked Ekman.

“Because after we got back from the airport we got a call from someone at the NBI. He’s been murdered at his home near Stallarholmen.”

“What? And you wait until now to tell me this?” Ekman took the receiver from his ear and looked at the phone in amazement.

“We couldn’t know he was the one who put the letter there. And your people should know this anyway. Don’t you work together?”

Ekman chose not to answer. He stared at an email from the NBI that he’d just opened. He noted Hoffberg’s murder was still being kept out of the media spotlight, and journalists would not be fed their rations until just before the lunchtime news on Monday.

The political secretary continued, unhindered by the lack of response. “We’re in the middle of planning a speech for the PM to give on Monday to express our condolences for the family. My God, what does this mean?”

Ekman looked up to see the forensic scientist hurry into his room, waving a sheet of paper. “I’ve got an ID on the set of prints you asked about.”

Ekman told the secretary he’d call back later. “I’m guessing Leo Hoffberg,” he said.

“What do you need me for?” asked the scientist. “You seem to know the answers without the science.” He tossed the plastic bag with the report onto Ekman’s desk. “And Real Madrid’s winning, so eat your heart out.”

“Nothing like an intelligent guess,” Ekman replied with a smile, tapping his head. “And Barça still rules.”

Ekman dialled the direct number for the Prime Minister. “It’s Chief Inspector Ekman, Prime Minister. I think we’ve identified the man who left the letter in your mailbox.”

“You don’t seem to work very quickly, Chief Inspector Ekman,” said the PM. “I just talked to my secretary and he told me it must have been Leo Hoffberg. You know he was murdered, of course.”

“I do now,” said Ekman. “We were informed about Hoffberg’s death as a formality. I’m sure the NBI is working on it already. There’s a news blackout regarding the murder until Monday. Does this mean anything to you? Why would Hoffberg make such a threat?”

“I don’t know. We didn’t get along too well when he worked here as a politician. He was a member of the Defence Department Committee, and he, uh, well, he published certain classified information about the sinking of the MS Sally on his web page. We asked him to resign his post, of course. He kept up with his world peace crap, but I never imagined it could come to this. I’m planning on giving a speech about him.”

Ekman picked up the plastic bag containing Hoffberg’s threatening letter. “It says here Hoffberg put some kind of powerful bomb in the middle of the city.”

The Prime Minister didn’t answer, and Ekman was unsure his question had got through.

“Prime Minister?”

“Yes.”

“The bomb must still be in the centre of the city,” said Ekman.

“No, I don’t think there was ever a bomb at all,” said the Prime Minister. “Hoffberg was just threatening, banging his impotent little spear on his pathetic little shield, so to speak, hoping I’d give in and do whatever it was he wanted me to do. He was a bit of a fanatic, you know, but in the end just a harmless clown.”

“What if you’re wrong?”

“I’m not wrong. I’m certain Hoffberg was just bluffing, and now he’s dead. He can’t even succeed as an extortionist.”

“But you believed in the threat before you found out it was Hoffberg. What made you suddenly change your mind?”

“Ha! Just because it was Hoffberg.” The PM’s voice was arrogant, mocking. “He’d never have had the guts to try anything so foolish. I mean, it’s crazy, trying to force me into political decisions by threatening to blow up a city. Only Hoffberg would come up with such a ridiculous bluff. And now he’s dead, so we have nothing more to fear from him.”

“Yes,” said Ekman, “I agree. It is crazy. But maybe Hoffberg was, well, crazy.”

“He was an elected Member of Parliament,” said the Prime Minister. “That should be guarantee enough he wasn’t insane. Thank you for solving this so quickly, Chief Inspector Ekman. We’ll keep in touch. We’ve devised a plan to have the Parliament Building searched tomorrow without attracting attention, a measure we’re taking just in case. If we find anything then we’ll act on it, of course. Thank you again.”

“Prime Minister?” said Ekman as he heard the click which created an empty space between them. “I hope we won’t find out you had anything to do with Hoffberg’s death.”

Ekman went to a safe in the corner, twirled the combination and swung the door open. He withdrew a worn, blue file held shut by an elastic band which snapped as he opened it. The first page of the file was a report bearing the emblem of the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States, stamped Top Secret. The date at the top of the report was September 1st 1994. He flipped through several pages, shaking his head. When he reached a page with the words MS SALLY underlined, Ekman picked up the phone and punched three numbers. He massaged his temple. He went back to reading Hoffberg’s letter while he waited for Sven Peterson, head of the NBI, to answer. There was something very final about the letter, almost as if it didn’t matter to Hoffberg if his bluff worked or not.

*

Peterson was a man who was never more than two rings away from his cell phone. He answered almost immediately when he noticed Ekman’s name on the display.

“Hello, Ekman. I suppose you’ve seen the results – Barça’s getting smacked in the chops. I win, you lose. Where are you taking me for lunch?”

“There’s still time for me to win, but that’s not why I called. You’re working on a homicide, Leo Hoffberg. We just got involved. I need a briefing. Quickly.”

“I figured you guys might be interested, so I’ve kept it from the press for the time being. We’re not sure what happened yet – could be a domestic, could be a crazy person. We’ve only been on it for a few hours.”

“Who’s leading the investigation?” asked Ekman.

“The Terrier – you know, Markham, Sara Markham. She’s out there right now. Hoffberg was killed at home, out on Sela Island.”

“Let’s get together immediately. Hoffberg did something very bizarre before he was killed, and we’ve got a lot to do. Get over here right now.”

Chapter 3

Across the Atlantic, in a flat in Philadelphia, retired US Army CID field officer Lt John Hurtree was just waking up. He’d been sleeping better in the last few months after the nightmares about his last open case had finally been put to rest. He’d been cheated of the chance to see any criminals behind bars, but had been awarded a giant dose of satisfaction by revealing the identity of a child belonging to one of history’s most infamous mass murderers. Hurtree had never had any proof to satisfy anyone except himself, but with the help of a young and very pretty homicide detective in Stockholm, they had managed to put the pieces of his puzzle together.

His job as an investigator in the US Army CID was to deal with army crimes: beatings in the platoon, robberies from the PX, driving a tank while drunk, and occasionally a crime that involved the secret police from East Germany, the Stasi.

Hurtree reviewed his notebooks sometimes, wondering if some of the strange, unanswered questions still on his mind when on duty in Heidelberg would pop up as part of some background programme on the History Channel. There were several pages with Sweden written at the top of the page. Most ended in a series of question marks. He kept his notebook in a bookcase filled with books about the Second World War, jammed between a copy of Education for Death and several old vinyl records standing in their album covers: The Beatles, ABBA, the Rolling Stones, John Coltrane and the Mamas and the Papas. Hurtree liked nearly everything in the way of music. His simple apartment was furnished in the same way as his room at the Heidelberg barracks: Spartan and easy to dust.

As he pulled out his notebook, it opened to an entry with the name Schneller at the top of the page, followed by question marks. He’d studied the page many times, and it bore rings from moist cans of beer and glasses of whisky.

Hurtree sat down in a khaki armchair, a can of Guinness Export in his hand, so cold a slight fog left the hole in the top as he opened it, creating a sound similar to putting a round in the chamber of his Colt 45 automatic.

He poured the brown, foaming liquid into a tall glass and waited for it to turn into a drinkable meal. He examined his drawings of Schneller, an extremely efficient Stasi agent, and a man he had added to his notebook so many years ago.

Hurtree had used his talent as an artist several times when he worked as a detective for the US Army CID. He was often able to provide other officers with a useable sketch of criminals, enabling them to get a head start and leading to many early arrests.

Smudges on his drawing of Schneller couldn’t conceal the coldness in this criminal’s heart. Hurtree sometimes sat for hours on end, wondering what had become of the man who had always slipped through his fingers, running to his hiding place in Sweden, where it was suspected he had contacts very high up in the Swedish government, so well-placed his real identity was never revealed. Hurtree made his drawings one afternoon when he’d succeeded in locating Schneller during a stakeout, and he’d drawn the face twice, once as a man, and again as the woman Schneller had become after entering a dress shop in Munich.

Hurtree didn’t know it, but they were the only images which existed of Schneller, a man who had never been photographed. I wonder where you are today, you fucker? Hurtree stared at the drawings as he sipped his Guinness. I’ll bet you’re one of the few that managed to get away when the shit began to fly.

Last month he had spent several hours shopping for a Christmas card to send to Detective Markham, afraid to imply too much familiarity, but at the same time afraid his message would be too formal or emotionless. He wanted to tell her he thought of her as the daughter in the family he had never had.

He finally went to a shop specialising in Swedish gifts and looked for an appropriate card. He picked out one with a simple silver snowflake on a blue background, with no message inside. This was much better than the typical American Christmas card and the ten-word messages to fill almost every occasion, but with only one approved feeling at a time. He liked the idea of being able to use a few more words to convey the complexity of what he felt for Sara Markham. He asked the matronly shop attendant how to write Merry Christmas in Swedish, and went home to begin to write.

He sat with the card for days, filling several trash bags with the crumpled paper of failed attempts. Finally he took a piece of fresh paper and began from the end, ending his message with the Swedish phrase for Merry Christmas.

God Jul, he wrote at the bottom, then added single words above that seemed to describe what it was he felt: lonely, happy, smile, melancholy, fun, lonely, then placed the paper on the table. Hurtree stared at it, hoping something would fill the spaces between the words, and stroked the fuzz of his greyed military haircut, trying to coax more thoughts, but it was useless; he wasn’t much of a man for words.

Last week he’d sent the card with only two words, God Jul, scrawled just above his name. He tried to project all the other emotions in the blank space left on the inside of the card by staring at it for several minutes before he sealed it in the envelope, but was sure they couldn’t be conveyed. John Hurtree was far too old to imagine even a first chance with Sara, but the wistful memories her name brought back were enough to brighten up the dismal month of November in Philadelphia. He had fixed a sticker on the envelope with his name, address and telephone number, hoping maybe next year Sara would send him a card to warm his winter. Now, only a week later, he was about to get quite a bit more than that.

*

Sunday morning was on top of Sara before she was ready for it. The sound of the squeaky fan in the single heating element warming her room had kept her awake nearly all night. It was a dieter’s breakfast, even for someone used to nearly fasting in the morning. Sara’s room at the B&B in Stallarholmen had a tiny pantry with a noisy refrigerator and a miniature electric plate, a microwave oven and a water cooker. She could choose from coffee, tea or chocolate, all in powdered form. The milk for the tea was also white powder with a list of ingredients that seemed longer than the packet itself.

The owner had put two slices of white bread on a paper plate in the refrigerator, wrapped under a plastic foil. Sara found a tiny plastic container of margarine and a portion of either orange marmalade or blackcurrant jam to choose from. Lying beside the paper plate she found the luxury of a plastic spoon and knife.

Sara watched the morning news on the TV while she ate, happy to see her case had still not been discovered by the media. At five to eight Sven called her cell phone.

“Good morning,” he said. “Is Mariefred still worth its reputation?”

“As what?” asked Sara. “The tiniest town on the planet? All I’ve seen here is a miniature room and a breakfast that defies description because it’s too small to see. The owner is nice, very friendly. I’ll remember this place the next time I need a weekend holiday, but I’ll bring my own food with me. So far the only good news is we’re still not on the news yet, as far as I can see.”

“It’s the weekend,” said Sven. “Things will change tomorrow, so let’s get as much work done as we can. The disappearance case in your vicinity yesterday was on the news, and people have been calling in all kinds of sightings and descriptions. I think we have some very good leads to work with.”

“Good. When can I leave this place?”

“You should talk to the victim’s wife first. I want you to ask her about what Hoffberg thought about the Prime Minister. Ask her if her husband had any feelings of aggression towards the PM, and if he ever spoke of threats to the government.”

“Threats?” asked Sara. “Is there something I should know before I talk to her again?”

“Just ask her about it. I’ll be out there soon, and I’ll have Ekman with me.”

“Ekman? NSS Ekman? So there is something I should know.”

“Just ask her and see what kind of reaction you get,” said Sven. “And if you have time, get over to the wife of the man who disappeared. I want to eliminate the possibility that the two cases might be related. I’ll be coming out there about lunchtime. What can you recommend?”

“I recommend you take lunch with you. Even a hamburger from the real world would be appreciated,” said Sara.

*

She was on her way across the bridge to Sela Island when her cell phone rang. It was Sven again.

“We’re out here already. Where can we meet?”

“I just finished up interviewing the wife again. I’m on my way to see if there’s any connection to the man who disappeared out here yesterday. I saw they featured it on the news.”

“Yes, and people are still calling in to us about it. How far away are the two locations?”

“Not far at all. The murder case is near the harbour and the disappearance case is out on the island somewhere.”

“We’re getting information which could be related to your murder case, although people are calling regarding the disappearance, which is good.”

“Do you know who’s working the disappearance?” she asked.

“No. One of the officers assigned to the disappearance was in the patrol boat diverted to your case. Anyway, all we know so far is the man who went missing yesterday hasn’t shown up. I spoke to his wife on the phone this morning. She’s assuming the worst. Shall we meet there?”

“Yeah, I’m almost there,” said Sara.

“I know, I see you coming.” Sven got out of his car and waved to Sara as she drove up just before the long driveway to the Spimler house. He was wearing his usual blue plaid shirt under a green army jacket. Sara had joked about it once, and he’d told her he hated to shop for clothes, so when he found something he liked he bought everything he could at the same time. The blue plaid shirt was actually one of eight, one worn each day and all seven of them washed at the end of the week while he wore the eighth.

She got into Sven’s car to discuss what they would be asking about when they met Mrs Spimler, and twisted her head around to see Ekman sitting in the back seat.

Lars Ekman stretched out his hand. “Ekman,” he said. “We’ve met before.”

“Yes,” said Sara, “I remember. The Dolphin case. Are you here because of the disappearance? Is there a connection to my case?”

“No. We’re looking at the Spimler disappearance to make sure there’s no connection, but there might be matters of national security involved in your homicide,” said Ekman. “We’re not taking over yet, but I want to be briefed about what you’ve found out so far, and be kept up to speed. I’ll tag along with you on your next interview, if you don’t mind. Did Hoffberg’s widow have anything more to say today?”

“She mentioned several arguments between the PM and her husband, but she seemed surprised by the possibility of threats to the government. We have a witness who gave us a possible vehicle used to exit the crime scene, an old Volvo, and that’s about it.”

As Sven spoke about who would begin the interview, Sara looked out the front window of his car to see the Hoffberg house on the other side of the channel. She pointed to it and said, “Sven, the Hoffberg house. That’s where the murder took place.”

*

Sara walked between Sven and Lars as they made their way up the walkway towards the Spimler house, two storeys, built nearly a hundred years ago, now a shiny yellow from a coat of fresh paint. There were several buildings scattered near the house for tractors and animal feed, and the smell of animal dung hung in the crisp autumn air. At the back of the house, facing the channel, a large patio covered in vines blazed in red leaves.

Martin Spimler’s wife answered the door and let them in, waving aside their identification cards. She was an attractive woman in her late forties, sunburned and appeared to be strong, a weightlifter of bales of hay and sheep.

“I know who you are,” she said. “Please tell me if you’ve heard anything more.”

When they got settled in the reception room, Mrs Spimler began the story again. They let her talk, listening for anything new which might be added to what she’d already provided on the telephone.

Her husband hadn’t returned from his fishing trip. He was overdue by more than four hours when she’d taken one last look towards the small ribbon of water separating Sela Island from the rest of Sweden. Her husband’s lunch had become cold and inedible several hours earlier, and he still hadn’t answered her text message. She’d keyed in the number of the local police station. An unusual lull in emergency events made it possible for her to get assistance immediately. A helicopter had been dispatched to scan the lake just west of Stockholm; a patrol boat was sent out to begin a search of the water, starting from her home. In less than two hours they’d found his workboat, the Little Miss Perfect, drifting empty in the blue waters of Lake Mälaren, just opposite City Hall, in the very centre of the city. After a while she fell silent, seemingly dwelling on what might have happened to her husband. Sara interrupted her thoughts.

“Maybe you could tell us a little about this house, how long you’ve lived here and what you and your husband normally do.”

Mrs Spimler seemed surprised at first, but then took the chance to remember something more pleasant. “This is my family home. I inherited it when my parents passed away, and Martin and I moved out here to fulfil our dream of living in the country. It’s been owned by our family for over a hundred years.”

Mrs Spimler smiled as she told of how pleased her husband had been to be able to live near the water. A Navy diver for many years, ten years ago he had been offered a job working for a private company servicing oil rigs in the Atlantic, off the Norwegian coast. The money he could make in just a few weeks usually lasted them half a year and he could spend his free time under the water, doing his own naturalistic studies of the marine wildlife of the lake outside their doors. She ran the highly mechanised farm, which didn’t require much work from either of them.

Sven asked if they knew the neighbours around the farm, and Mrs Spimler replied that out in the country, everyone knew everyone.

“And the Hoffbergs?” he asked, motioning towards the house.

“Oh, them. I don’t know them very well, but Martin knows Leo Hoffberg. Their house is over there – you can see it from where you’re sitting. They have some kind of project together regarding the environment. They speak to each other on the phone a lot. I don’t care for him, Hoffberg. He’s a pompous ass. Used to be a Member of Parliament so he thinks he’s somebody important. He made a lot of absolutely ridiculous proposals in the past. Would have ruined farming in this country, or at least for us. He isn’t a very practical person, but my husband likes him.”

They left Mrs Spimler at the door and were walking back to their cars when the patrol boat officer called Sara’s cell phone. They exchanged only a few words. She got into Sven’s car as she said goodbye to the officer.

“So there’s a link between Spimler and Hoffberg,” said Sven as she settled into her seat. “There isn’t much of a connection, but they weren’t total strangers. As far as I’m concerned, we can put Spimler on the list of suspects for the Hoffberg killing. Have you ever met Cantsten, the new Assistant District Attorney? She’s still a bit of a bureaucrat, but she’ll get over it soon.”

“I agree about Spimler,” said Sara, “but there’s more. The officer who was investigating the disappearance just got word Spimler’s boat has been searched. They found an envelope from the Defence Committee where Hoffberg worked when he was in Parliament. There was a photocopy of a map in it.”

Sven stared at the steering wheel, patiently waiting. Finally, he asked, “OK, I give up, a map of what?”

“Nothing,” she said. “He said it was just water.”

Ekman squirmed slightly in the back seat, swallowing several questions as he tried to get Sven’s attention.

“Get that map on your way back to the station and leave it at Forensics,” said Sven. “We’ve got work to do when you get there. I’ll talk to Cantsten for you and get Spimler in her sights as a suspect, and I’ll form the team for tomorrow. Anyone you would prefer?”

Sara somehow managed to stop the emotional response on its way up from her gut. Controlling her voice, she said, “I’d rather not have Robert Johnson on this case, if we can avoid it. He seems to slow things down.” Johnson had created a lot of confusion with his errors not long ago. He’d even been investigated by Internal Affairs. Since then Sara found it difficult to trust him, and when they worked together she always reduced him to a patrolman. She worked the case with one man short when he was part of the team.

“Sara, get over it and move on. If he can’t pull his own weight let me deal with it. Give him a chance again. We don’t have enough manpower so he’s on the team. End of story.”

Sara walked back to her car, mulling over the change in the investigation. She followed Sven and Ekman up to the turnoff to the Hoffberg home.

*

Ekman switched on the car radio, found a news programme and adjusted the volume.

“Keep the Terrier focused on Spimler as Hoffberg’s killer. And I want her eyes open for any connection to an explosive weapon. I’m sure the map found in Spimler’s boat is important. Send me a copy when it comes in.”

Sven nodded his head as he replied, “Sure, but you know Sara will start to work this Volvo lead.” He turned down the radio.

“Yeah. And it might get us somewhere, but it’s important we find Spimler. He must be the key.”

Sven pointed out a roadside restaurant ahead. “You hungry? It seems clear Hoffberg hid some kind of highly explosive device in the middle of the city. Don’t we have an obligation to allow people to avoid getting hurt?”

“Sven, listen carefully. The Prime Minister has said he doesn’t believe in the threat, and he works there every day. They’re searching the House of Parliament for explosives, and so far they haven’t found anything. What we have to know is who killed Hoffberg, and why. If it’s tied to some kind of threat it’ll emerge as part of the investigation, but don’t steer your team into a possible dead end. We need to know more.”

“And if the PM’s wrong?” Sven asked as he pulled into the drive-thru lane. “I mean, we’re not the only ones who work in the centre of the city.”

“The PM is wrong,” said Ekman. “And you’re right about us working close to something that might kill us and half the city. That’s why we have to locate that device before anyone else. In the meantime your team has a murder to solve, and fast. Leave the questions of security to me.”

*

Yeah, right. National Security, Sara said to herself as she watched Sven’s car disappear on the way to Stockholm. She glanced at the house across the small stretch of water and the image of Hoffberg’s corpse flashed back into her mind. I’m going to catch this murderer anyway, regardless of what the NSS thinks.

Sara left Spimler’s driveway, and took a left turn to enter the nearest neighbour’s property. No one answered her loud knocks on the door, and she turned to walk back to her car, when a small brown tourist sign indicating an ancient rune stone caught her attention. She walked the grassy path to view it. Next to the rune stone, a historical landmark plaque told her the stone was more than a thousand years old, and had been carved by Ingefrid to commemorate her father killing a man named Assur to avenge some kind of deceitful act carried out in the west. A Templar cross was engraved in the centre of the stone. Justice was a lot simpler in those days, thought Sara. You need justice? Just go to the Ting and make your case, and if you can kill the other guy, you win. Then you get to write it in stone.

Hoffberg’s house was out of view, behind the wall of trees she’d noticed on her first visit. Then she remembered the policeman in the patrol boat still waiting on the other side, and drove quickly from the island to the other side of the channel.

Hoffberg’s boat was sleek and powerful, but with barely enough room for two people on board. An open hatch led to a small crawl space forward. An enormous V-12 motor glistened in the sun, and there was a scent of oil and fuel in the air.

The police patrol boat was moored next to it, bobbing gently in the chill of the afternoon, and Burger was waiting for Sara, hunkered down in the ruff of his boat, tapping his feet to the sounds of a local country and western radio station.

“Has Forensics had a chance to examine his boat?” Sara asked the officer as she looked across the narrow channel towards the Spimler home. She saw Mrs Spimler moving about in the kitchen. When winter came and the channel was covered with ice it would be easy to walk from one house to the other.

“No.” Burger turned off his radio. “They told me they’d be taking it in on a trailer later today.”

“Well, since you’ve already been poking around on it, let’s see what you found,” she told him. “I still want Forensics to look at his boat.” She donned a pair of plastic gloves from the back pocket of her jeans. “I also want to have a look at the map you talked about. Where is it now?”

“Talk to Stockholm’s maritime police, they contacted me when they found it. It’s strange, but I found a map in this boat too. I looked around the motor first, wanted to see if there was anyone hiding there. I found the envelope and the map, and then I put it back in that compartment. I suppose I’ll have to be fingerprinted.”

“No.” Sara stooped to open the door to the compartment next to the wheel. “We’ve got your prints already. Procedure as usual. But if you’d had your gloves on we could at least have been able to process this a little bit quicker.”

“I’ll wear them to bed from now on,” said Burger.

“So tell me,” Sara asked as she pulled the map from the envelope, “what’s on this map? I don’t see anything on it at all.”

“It’s like I told you,” he said, “it’s a map of water. You can see from the coordinates it’s somewhere out in the Baltic.”

“Just water? Strange thing to have a map of.”

“Not on a boat,” said Burger.

Sara returned the map to the envelope and placed it in a plastic evidence bag. She took several digital photos of the inside and bottom of the boat for her own purposes. The people from Forensics were always very thorough, but they sometimes missed just the angle she would need later on. Her own images couldn’t be used in court as evidence, but they might be helpful to stimulate her thinking. She was already thinking about the map.

“I want you to stay here until the dog team has arrived. They’ll need your help to walk through the site. You can refer to me if necessary,” said Sara. “I’ll be contacting you either this afternoon or tomorrow morning.”

She began the drive back to her flat in Sundbyberg, where she could curl up in a chair with a cup of green tea while she stared at the TV and the Sunday night news.

*

Sara put her television on mute when the late news was replaced by a commercial spot advertisement. Still nothing about my case. Good. She glanced around her flat. It was simple, but at least she owned the lease on it and was not at the mercy of a greedy landlord. Sara had spent most of her summer holiday repainting the walls, and the smell of fresh paint lingered. She had arranged a number of potted plants in one corner where she could sit on a thick prayer rug that seemed to levitate her entire body when she meditated. It had become her most important pastime, a way to balance her assertive, go-for-the-throat attitude during the day, and expand her awareness. Sara had begun to realise that the peaceful contemplation just before meditation was also a method for her to analyse the complexity of the cases she worked on.

She walked over to the corner, lit a small candle to focus on and turned off the ceiling lamp before she crawled into her artificial jungle and sat on the rug. Focusing on the candle for a minute, Sara began to review her interview with the victim’s wife. She recalled the scene and was struck by the detail of Kristina Hoffberg’s account of the day of the murder. It seemed the widow could remember everything.

Sara had noticed people reacted differently when confronted with the violent death of a loved one: some with uncontrolled grief, some with unemotional coldness, while there were even those who expressed relief when they heard the news. But there’d been no vague answers, no ‘I can’t remember’ responses in Kristina Hoffberg’s recollection, something that was typically so common when interviewing people who had been through traumatic events. In Kristina’s case it was just detail after intricate detail, almost as if she’d been reading a script, and yet in spite of the detail there seemed to be things left out. Sara would still have to consider Kristina Hoffberg as a possible conspirator to her husband’s murder.

In the background, a breaking news banner flashed on Sara’s muted TV, as several Opposition Party leaders stood in front of the news cameras, complaining about the Prime Minister’s decision to give Parliament a holiday because of a few rodents and comparing it to Hitler’s power takeover when the Reichstag had been torched by the Nazis. There would be repercussions, they warned, and one even went so far as to threaten the PM with yet another session in front of Parliament’s Committee on Constitutional Oversights.

The television cameras then focused on the nation’s highest politician as he carefully pointed out why the Opposition should be happy; they wouldn’t have to get used to the presence of rodents where they worked. Then, he added, smiling with obvious pleasure, there seemed to be many of them in the Parliament Building.

At the close of his comments the cameraman panned to the right and just before Sara slipped into the private world of meditation, she caught a glimpse of Niklas Shoreman, the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, speaking on a cell phone. He gestured wildly as he spoke. Dressed in an immaculate grey suit and a matching tie, he could easily have passed for a male model at any French fashion designer, even though he publicly decried the bourgeois need for cultural capitalism. At this moment he was another cog in the several wheels spinning at top speed, all looking for Leo Hoffberg’s killer.

Chapter 4

Monday, and a raw autumn morning. Sara decided to skip the bus and clear her mind by walking to the train. Sundbyberg was bathed in the frosted colours of late October. She wove through streets glistening with ice on her way to the station, and passed a shop selling textiles. Yarn balls of hand-woven Gotland’s wool rested in the window beside bolts of hand-woven linen. A bone-chilling winter was only weeks away. She had no time to shop, and hurried on.

The irregular working hours, morbid quality of her job, and her own solitary nature had left her social life a sterile desert. Sara broke her nearly monastic existence outside her workplace on very few occasions, but when she did, she took the opportunity to experience a complete change of scenery. Two or three times a year she took part in a medieval fantasy live theatre, playing the part of a witch and soothsayer, known to the other players only as Adelisa.

Sara’s research for her secret hobby was meticulous, a copy of what she did at work. She’d become a proficient seamstress while creating her own wardrobe of hand-woven linens. Adelisa’s heavy grey jacket, woven from the wool of Gotland’s sheep, had cost her a small medieval fortune to purchase the materials. No one at homicide knew of her leisure time activity, and none of the live theatre players knew what she did for a living in the real world.

*

Sara’s train to the Central Station was late as usual.

Why is it so difficult to coordinate a bunch of railway cars limited to movement on a set of tracks?

She’d been in Switzerland on a school trip and had been amazed by their train service, telling her grandmother she could set her watch by the arrival of a commuter train into the station. Time seemed to run on a different set of tracks in Stockholm.

When Sara got into the city she continued her walk to work. The exercise would trim off the half-burger from Stallarholmen, and she needed to go through the Hoffberg case in her mind before meeting with the team. Then there was the question of why Ekman was getting involved. “National Security,” he’d said, but it was what he did.

I’d better get this case in the box before he takes over entirely.

The air was crisp with the smell of the oncoming winter, and tinged with birch smoke from the few fireplaces still burning real fuel. Sara was glad she’d put on her gloves. Winter was her favourite season, a time when nature helped her out by making it difficult for criminals to move around without leaving tracks. She brought the plastic bag with the envelope containing the map with her into Police Headquarters in Kungsholmen. Sara removed her boots, gloves, coat and sweater in her office and headed for the corridor of rooms where active case material was stored while under investigation.

She tossed the plastic bag onto the table. “Here’s a beginning to start us thinking. It has to be sent to Forensics, but we can take a peek at it before, if we’re careful.”

Sven gingerly opened the envelope, seizing the map with a pair of tweezers. “OK,” he said, “so this must be from Spimler’s boat.” He spread the map on the table in front of them.

“No, boss,” said Sara, “this is from Hoffberg’s boat. The map from Spimler’s boat is still in Forensics, but according to the description, I’d bet they’re photocopies.”

Everyone in the room chewed on the morsel, their first tangible link between the two neighbours. Spimler, whose name was already on the whiteboard at the end of the room, was now a definite suspect in the Hoffberg killing.

The map, a page out of a set of navigational charts, squared off with lines of longitude and latitude and some occasional numbers indicating depth. There were no other symbols; no islands, no shoreline, just white paper between the thin, black grid lines and some numbers, mostly two digits between seventy-five and eighty-five. They stared at the map like it was a watch-pot, waiting for something to boil up from the emptiness between the lines.

Sven was first to speak. “OK then. Let’s see where these two went fishing.” He took an almanac out of his pocket and opened it to a section containing pages of maps, including the eastern shoreline of Sweden. He looked at it briefly, then continued on to a page of the southern coastline of Finland. He followed the grid on the tiny map to the bottom of the page, then found the page covering the entire Baltic Sea forming a border with Finland, Russia, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. He checked the region covered by the map from Hoffberg’s boat and made a small dot on the map in his almanac.

“Now, what’s out there, I wonder?” asked Sven.

Silence. No sailors in this group. Heads turned towards Sven, but he didn’t elaborate. Sara took up the report from the forensic examination of the Hoffberg house. There was a detailed list of each room, showing the location of each item deemed important to the case, and a description of why it had been included in the heap of black plastic bags now piled up against one of the walls. She was looking for a description of the box in the bedroom when an entry regarding the contents of the sink caught her eye.

“Hey, here’s something. There were two coffee cups in the sink. They’d been washed, but there were traces of Rohypnol left in the sink. Looks like we can explain how Hoffberg could have been immobilised. It also seems to rule out a violent break-in. If you can share a cup of coffee with your murderer then there’s some kind of familiarity between them. So why would Hoffberg let his killer into the house, even share a cup of coffee? It doesn’t seem like he was afraid he’d be harmed.”

“There’s another thing,” said Robert Johnson. “There was no tape on the victim’s mouth. The killer wasn’t worried about the victim screaming for help while he was getting tortured.”

“Maybe the killer wanted the victim to speak. Maybe the killer was torturing him to get information,” said Sara, “and whatever he wanted to know was so important he didn’t care if the victim shouted for help.”

The new guy, Dan Olsson, had already begun to research the victim and he began his summary. Hoffberg had decided not to run for office in the last election, stating to the press that family reasons lay behind his decision.

Sara quickly added a column for Kristina Hoffberg on the whiteboard, then the words shopping, at café during murder. She added a question mark after, then another to indicate her uneasiness after her interview with the widow. Olsson told her he’d found a bunch of love letters and postcards from the victim to the widow when he was still married to his first wife.

“So Leo was a bad boy when he was younger,” said Sara. “Do we know where the first wife is today?”

“She remarried, and lives in the US. As far as we know they had little to do with each other after the divorce, which was nearly fifteen years ago,” said Olsson.

“There was a postcard in Hoffberg’s kitchen,” said Sara, as she wrote divorced & remarried under Leo’s column, and love letters & postcards under the column for Kristina. “It was from a person called Magdalena, a cleaning woman from Poland according to Mrs Hoffberg. She gave me a phone number.” Sara wrote the number under Kristina Hoffberg’s name.

Robert Johnson had looked into Spimler’s background. “Spimler is ex-military,” he said. “He left the Navy ten years ago and last worked as a diver for a private company, NUTS – Nordic Underwater Technology Scanners. I’m still trying to contact them to see what he was working on lately, but no one’s answering the phone. His military record indicates he was a good shot, marksman class, but Hoffberg was shot at close range in the back, so it’s probably not relevant to the case.”

“Everything is relevant until we’ve got this solved, Robert,” said Sara.

Sven first looked sharply at her, then let her off the hook. “Sara’s right. We have to keep our minds open. The tiniest bit of information could solve this murder.”

Yvonne Cantsten opened the door shyly and said hello to everyone. A lock of blonde hair spilled over her glasses as she sat down, and she quickly put it back into place. She sat upright, knees together, her low heels planted firmly beside each other. Sven introduced her as their Assistant District Attorney for the Hoffberg case. She opened a thick green binder to a section beginning with H.

Cantsten cleared her throat. They waited for her to continue, but she just looked at them instead. Sven introduced everyone by name. When he got to Sara’s name she smiled, but Cantsten didn’t smile back. Oh great, the usual cooperation between women again, thought Sara.

“Don’t let me interrupt your meeting,” said Cantsten. “Sven gave me the basic details yesterday. I’m just here to get a feeling about this case.”

“Yeah, OK, then I’ll continue,” said Sara. “The dog team was out there yesterday. We now know the dogs found three scent trails at the back of the Hoffberg house. One was either coming up from the shore or going back to the boat, and from the look of the tracks it was Hoffberg coming up from his boat. The second scent went from the back of the house and continued through a patch of woods next to the driveway. They followed a trail ending at a place where a car had been parked. We have a fair set of tyre tracks to match to a vehicle if we ever find it. This same scent went from the parking place up to the front door, and was also found in the kitchen and garage.

“It looks like the killer came in a car, parked it near the house, walked up to the front door, went into the kitchen, killed Hoffberg in the garage and left by the back door. The killer wore some kind of plastic booties so we’ll have trouble finding a shoe-print, but from the look of what Forensics pulled off the garage floor they’re big, man-sized, and they’re guessing the killer was probably medium build.”

Sara continued as if she hadn’t heard the snickering behind her. “Dan, keep up the good work on Hoffberg’s background. You might want to talk to the Chairman of the Defence Committee at Parliament to see if you can get them to talk about Hoffberg. Robert, we need to get more information on Spimler. We also have to know if we’re chasing one person or several. See if there might be something more you can get out of the military regarding his background as a diver. Talk to his wife, maybe she’s got new ideas about where he might be. I’ll talk to Kristina Hoffberg again and try to find out more about why he quit the Parliament. We might have a motive there if she’s involved. And Robert, can you try to talk to the Hoffbergs’ cleaning lady, a woman called Magdalena?” She pointed to the number she’d written on the whiteboard. Finally she said, “You can also try to get something the dog team could work on, some personal article of clothing. I’d like to know if it’s Spimler’s scent we found going from the back of the house to where the car was parked. And remember, as far as she’s concerned we’re just trying to help her find him. Keep the Hoffberg case out of it when you speak to her. Let’s get together again first thing tomorrow morning. And Robert, don’t be late.”

Sara looked at Cantsten to see if she had anything to add, but she’d already closed her binder and was nearly out the door when she turned back and approached Sara.

“Sorry, nice to meet you,” said Cantsten, and then disappeared before Sara could say anything more than “Same here.”

*

Hurtree jogged until he could barely breathe. Wheezing, he found a bench in the park near his apartment, swept off the snow and sat down. Sweat dampened his running clothes and the chill invigorated him. He thought back to a night many years ago in Augsburg, an hour west of Munich.

He’d been following a group of drunken soldiers who had been boasting about their tank winning first place in a drag race between fifteen other tanks during manoeuvres near the border with East Germany. In the bar, the soldiers had been approached by a man who quickly made friends with them, buying several beers until they were the last ones to leave. Hurtree had followed the group, listening to their loud and boisterous banter, and heard the question fall out of the air, “And where do you store your tanks? Are they in the forest?”

One of the soldiers gladly described the squat, green building in a forest about a mile off a secondary road. “And our tank, the winner, is the last one on the right.”

Hurtree followed the man after he parted company with the soldiers, but lost him in the snowy park, Hurtree’s shoes squeaking his presence to the man in front of him. The following morning four tanks were stolen from the depot in the forest. It was the first time Hurtree encountered Schneller.

*

Lars Ekman strode through the arched portal to the inner courtyard of Stockholm’s City Hall. Sven Peterson was already waiting near a wall at the top of a flight of stairs, hunched against gusts of wind coming off the Arctic.

“You’re early, Sven.” Ekman watched as Sven came down the stairs, his long grey trench coat flapping like a sail loose in the wind. A green army stocking cap covered his ears and concealed his greying hair.

“Who’s counting?” Sven’s eyes watered and he wiped them with his gloved hand.

“It’s the counting I’m worried about,” said Ekman as they both exited the courtyard into the frozen rose garden towards the water’s edge. “I need your thoughts on where Hoffberg might have placed his threat.” He pulled out Hoffberg’s letter from the inside pocket of his coat. It was still in the plastic envelope from Forensics, smudged from the coal-black powder used to extract fingerprints. “It says here it’s somewhere in the centre of the city. All we have to do is figure out where.”

Sven gazed out over the Bay of Knights. Small white caps were beginning to form. “So far we’ve got nothing from the murder investigation that helps to point us anywhere. There was a map in Hoffberg’s boat, but it was only a chart of the water out in the Baltic south of Finland. A long way from here. Where would you hide it?”

“I’ve been trying to get into Hoffberg’s mind to figure that out. It’s not easy. He must have been crazy.”

“So where would a crazy politician put a threat which would destroy the centre of this city?”

“Wherever it is, he knew it might be discovered before he got a chance to use it, so it’s got to be hidden really well.” Ekman turned towards the Parliament Building, now lit against the winter afternoon sky.

“Yeah, everything over there has already been cleared,” said Sven. “The PM has had the entire political workshop searched. I’m sure you’ve heard about the stink it caused with the Opposition.”

“Yeah, our PM has a penchant for riling them up. He seems to enjoy it.”

Sven swivelled to the left. “Maybe he managed to get it into Government House. Maybe it’s sitting under the PM’s desk.”

Ekman frowned, unaffected by Sven’s attempt at humour. “I already checked with security at Government House. Not a single unauthorised entry, and no sign of Hoffberg on any of the surveillance tapes. Anyway, Rosenbad is almost as hard to get into as my office.” He gazed out towards Stockholm’s southern island, where dark shapes of buildings stuck onto the steep cliff plunged towards the water. The headlights of commuters on their way home illuminated the shoreline. More than twenty church steeples pointed towards the black, starless sky.

“Could it be in a church steeple?”

“Well, there would be a number of them to search. No,” said Ekman, “I don’t think you could pack enough explosives into any building to take out the centre of the city, not even using military grade explosives.”

“Well, if it’s not there, where is it?”

Ekman stomped his boots on the icy walkway just behind the low wall protecting the garden from the blustery waters of Lake Mälaren. “I think we have to find out what it is first. A bomb with enough force to take out the centre of the city would have to be very, very big.” Ekman squinted into the wind as he continued, “Or very small.”

Chapter 5

The Prime Minister’s secretary provided a reliable membrane between those parts of the journalistic corps looking for weakness or a mistake. He was a trusted member of the Party, a personal friend of the PM for many years and a recruit handpicked by a childhood friend, Niklas Shoreman, now Deputy Foreign Minister, and a key player in the political games played behind the curtains.

Shoreman and the PM’s secretary sat facing the PM as they ate lunch, looking out over the lake where they had just pulled up the fish nets put out the night before. Behind them, the PM’s beautiful home displayed a style suited to a wealthy farmer a hundred years ago, attracting barbs and unwelcome comments from journalists and others who had a hard time matching the PM’s socialistic language to his behaviour. At this moment they would have seen a man wearing a flannel shirt and blue jeans with rubber boots covered in mud and cow dung, eating his meal from a plastic plate and washing down his fried fish with a beer, instead of the champagne he was so often accused of favouring.

“This business about Hoffberg is dreadful,” said the PM. “Terrible! No one seems to have any respect for politicians anymore.”

“No, things were definitely different only a few years ago,” said the secretary, picking a fish bone from between his teeth. “We should send some kind of condolences to his family. Hoffberg was on the Defence Committee before he quit, so we’ll be able to get some positive press out of this. Tragic, untimely death, poor family and relatives, sad day for democracy, loss for those who want peace in the world, and so on. I have a speech written already. I wrote it for you when we thought the Minister of the Interior had been killed in that avalanche in France last year. Fortunately, we never had to use it.”

“Isn’t that spreading it on a little thick?” asked the PM. “I mean, he was only a Member of Parliament, and not even a very good one, if you ask me. He was useful when I wanted to cut a few billion from the defence budget, but all his crap about peace movements gave me some real headaches when I was travelling abroad. Would you believe the Chinese asked me why I tolerated such an outspoken politician?”

The secretary opened up his briefcase. “You can time your speech to coincide with the statement from his own party. They’re holding a press conference just before the lunch-hour news. If you happen to be in the corridor outside the press conference, I’m sure you can get something out of this.” He handed over several pages of manuscript to the PM.

“And whatever you say, keep China out of this,” said Shoreman. “Your comments about them being the world’s largest democracy were appreciated over there, but they got us into a lot of hot water with the Opposition.”

“OK,” said the PM, “let’s see,” as he shuffled the pages. “By the way, do we know anything more about Hoffberg’s killing? I mean, I hope this isn’t a sign of some kind of political action. Has the NSS said anything more about Hoffberg’s ridiculous threat?”

“No. All we know so far is he was murdered in his own home. Homicide has a suspect, but hasn’t managed to apprehend anyone yet.”

“Well, I’ll feel a lot safer when the killer is behind bars,” said the PM. “Do you think it would be too much to add a few words about our criminal justice policy?”

“I think you might be opening yourself up for criticism there,” said the secretary. “There are many more people who won’t feel safe until his killer is arrested. Our plan to get the Riksdag Building searched has only led to mindless bleating from the Opposition, of course. And so far the search has found nothing.”

Niklas Shoreman pushed his empty paper plate towards the middle of the table and carefully bit on his left little finger, a habit from his training in espionage to gain control of his composure, even when surprised. “They should find something,” he said, keeping his finger close to his lips. His voice was low and metallic, providing the impetus for some derogatory descriptions of him as ‘The Robot’. “We should get this off the news as soon as possible. The police should take someone into custody. Now.”

“Don’t you think they should concentrate on finding the guilty party first?” asked the secretary, one of the few people who had the power to question the judgment of Niklas Shoreman.

“No,” said Shoreman, “I think they should bring in someone they can charge. The details of who actually killed Hoffberg can be worked out later. Right now it’s important the nation doesn’t have to call into question the competence of our law enforcement agencies. People want speed and action. We have to be decisive.”

“I agree,” said the Prime Minister, expecting the subject to now be closed.

Niklas Shoreman’s voice then went low and determined, and his glacier-blue eyes stared at the Prime Minister. “I also think you should consider Hoffberg’s threat to be real. He’s dead, so he can’t hurt us politically as long as we don’t underestimate him. He was a fool, but a very diligent fool.”

“A dead fool.” The PM swirled the last drops in his beer bottle.

Shoreman took a deep breath. “Let’s make sure he doesn’t take us with him.”

*

At lunchtime the nation was told the shocking story that an ex-MP had been killed in his home, and that the police were confident they would soon be arresting the murderer. The chairperson for the Environmental Green Party delivered an impassioned speech about the importance of Leo Hoffberg and his contributions to Swedish society. Most of her speech was left on the cutting room floor at airtime and viewers were treated to the fatherly droning of the PM as he carefully, but in a very impromptu way, presented the speech written last year for someone else. He was good at projecting sorrow, and on the following day he would be able to read that his popularity in the daily polls had increased by two percentage points – still dangerously low, but on the rise.

Swedish news feeds were reviewed every day by a local employee at the US Embassy. He had just graduated with a degree in American Studies, and a serious desire to become a field agent for the Central Intelligence Agency. He watched the tape again, then wrote one word on a yellow sticky pad: Hoffberg? And stuck the note on the cartridge. By 2 pm the newbie graduate had been given a pat on the back, but was not allowed into the windowless conference room where the local CIA field office were replaying the tape.

“So now we know,” said Michael Rice, the Station Chief who had recently been promoted following the success of his operation at the Kiruna Esrange Space and Rocket Launching Station in the extreme north of Sweden. “Looks like the Russians have started the game.”

The mission leader stood up and moved to the whiteboard covering one end of the room. “Now that Hoffberg has been murdered, we have to find out if he managed to tell them anything about the location of the torpedo.”

The story on the whiteboard was simple.

Rocketfish lost on MS Sally

current location?

Swedish citz (Hoffberg/Spimler) buy manual in Tallinn/Schneller

He added the next line before sitting down,

Hoffberg murdered by?

“Does anyone not think Schneller did this?” Station Chief Rice flashed an ironic smile.

“He was the man MI6 contacted when they bought the Rocketfish for us. Our informant in Tallinn said he was involved in the sale of the manual.” The mission leader checked the file in front of him. “These clowns must have found the torpedo and found out how to contact him. Talk about walking into the spider’s house.”

“Well, Schneller didn’t contact our man from MI6. I guess we know what that means.” The Station Chief began erasing the whiteboard.

“The Russians are paying him to get it back.”

“Wouldn’t you?” asked one of the lower echelon intelligence officers.

“It’s ours. We already bought it.” Rice’s voice was hard, determined. Final.

“Who calls the NSS?” asked the mission leader.

“That’s me,” said Rice. “In the meantime I want a complete mission plan for how we recover our torpedo. We won’t have much time once it’s located, so I want a complete set of contingencies. I want that piece of hardware back.”

*

Sara called her grandmother when she got home from Stallerholmen. “Hi, Grandma, how do you feel today?”

“You know very well how I feel. I told you on Saturday, and you haven’t called back since. I felt just the same on Sunday, but you wouldn’t know, because you didn’t call or visit. I’m old, but this place is full of people even older than I am. I feel like I’ll never leave this place alive. It doesn’t matter, no one cares whether I live or die anyway.”

Sara was sure she would have continued to ramble, so she cut her off. “I’m sorry, I’m working on a very difficult case right now. I know I should have come out to visit you, but I just couldn’t. Please forgive me.”

As quickly as she had been the caustic reminder of Sara’s inadequacies, her grandmother switched on the honey-dripping sweetness which had given Sara a safe harbour during her entire childhood. “Oh, my little one, my little kitty pumpkin-bumpkin, I’m so sorry, I’m just an old biddy that could bicker with God. Don’t listen to me. Not you, God, you should listen to me more often, but you, Sara, just turn me off when I get this way.”

Sara didn’t have the heart to tell her grandmother she’d already pushed that button, and was hoping God hadn’t done the same. They said goodbye and Sara promised herself that she would visit at the end of the week.

*

Niklas Shoreman was in a hotel room near Stockholm that evening, and his telephone had become overheated from use. He threw it on the bed where it bounced several times, then in a fit of rage, Shoreman threw it at the wall, smashing it into pieces that scattered over the carpet like the remains of some prehistoric insect. He poured himself a large whisky from the bottle standing on the counter, and began picking up the pieces, assembling them into a working phone again. He pressed a speed-dial number and took a long sip of his whisky as he waited for an answer. After several rings a man’s voice answered in a thick Russian accent.

“It’s late, Niklas,” said the voice, “but you must have news. Tell me.”

“I have news, but it’s not good,” said Shoreman. “There’s no sign of the weapon. The police are investigating Hoffberg’s death, but they’re getting nowhere. Schneller seems to be in the clear, so far. I think it would be a good time for him to disappear, if you know what I mean. Do you know where he is?”

“Schneller would be difficult person to find,” said the voice on the other end. “So you will find him and locate weapon before things becomes complicated.”

“I’m afraid things have already become complicated.” Shoreman placed his little finger between his teeth.

Chapter 6

No one could connect Kim Lemko with his codename, Schneller. He was used to being sought. In the same way celebrities knew how to seek out the public eye, Lemko knew exactly how to avoid it. It was one of the keys to his profession, and he’d been trained at one of the best schools in the world, the East German Stasi. This is where he’d met one of the men who would further his career in Sweden, a high-ranking Swedish politician with connections leading to those men who governed the country, a man who had helped him with the paperwork which lay behind his ability to smuggle tons of munitions.

At the same time, he knew it wasn’t just the police after him. This time many of the players in the Baltic Cold War were trying to find him: the CIA, the FSB, MI6 and the Swedish NSS. He felt like a quail, hoping the hunter’s foot wouldn’t land too close to where he was hiding, but poised for flight when it did. He knew the consequence of failure, and he knew he’d have to tread a razor’s edge along the gauntlet of those wanting him dead.

Six hours after Hoffberg’s death, Kim Lemko eased his aging Volvo into the barn, positioning all four wheels on two long metal plates in the floor. The motor purred to a stop, a faithful machine which had served him well for a long time. He got out, strode to the wall next to the door and pushed a red button. Instead of raising the car to be lubed and serviced, the hydraulic lift hissed as air was released and the dark blue Volvo descended into its hiding place in the floor. When the car’s roof was no longer visible, he pushed the button just to one side, and air squealed into a new set of hydraulic cylinders as a thick steel plate covered the Volvo’s hiding place. He kicked hay on top of the steel plate, closed the barn door and trotted towards his house in a drizzling rain.

Lemko shivered in the darkness of his home. Many years ago he’d remodelled the interior, creating inner walls of steel. Observation from the outside was impossible; not with microwave, not with infrared, not even with radar. Sensors buried in the ground at the perimeter of his property fed infrared and CCTV images to a computer system monitoring the status of his security. Sounds louder than a deer walking on the gravel road triggered immediate alarms.

For the moment, Lemko felt safe, but he knew that outside his property, forces were at work, trying to find him. He also knew that his normal recourse in times of desperation was now a part of those trying to locate him.

He clicked a symbol on his computer monitor and listened once more to the conversation he’d recorded between Hoffberg and his accomplice, looking for something in the conversation which might provide him with the final key to finding the weapon he had been hired to retrieve.

With Hoffberg dead, there was only one person left who could help him: Hoffberg’s neighbour, Martin Spimler. He knew he had to find Spimler, but he also knew he couldn’t take the risk of leaving his hiding place right now. He felt stress take hold of his stomach. He’d have to create a new plan of action tomorrow. Now, alone in the safety of his own home, he allowed himself the luxury of a quiet, whimpering nervous breakdown. Tears ran down his cheeks.

*

As dawn broke, Lemko sat in the silence of the steel womb separating him from the outside world. He was hungry, but when he had tried to eat a boiled egg, it came up almost immediately.

He had to be very careful from now on, more than usual. Someone answered the call he had placed using the cell phone he held in his right hand.

“Da?”

Lemko spoke three numbers in Russian, then ended the call. Before a minute had gone by the cell phone in his left hand began to ring. He pressed the talk button, but said nothing.

“You called,” said the voice on the other end.

“Yes.” Lemko sighed in relief. “I need your help.”

The voice at the other end used Lemko’s codename. “Schneller, they already begin ask about you. What you do?”

“I screwed up the assignment. I need your help to set it right.”

There was a brief silence, then, “What you want me do?”

“I need to find a man in the Stockholm area called Spimler. He was a friend of the man who bought the manual for the Shkval.”

“I heard of him.”

“Can you help me?”

“Stockholm is long way away.”

“But you have friends there,” Lemko pleaded.

“Yes, but most of them looking for you. I see what I can do. Do not want too much.”

“I’m sure you can help me,” said Lemko.

“Maybe that’s why you get trouble,” said the voice. The line went dead.

Under Lake Mälaren, within sight of the Parliament Building, the clock on the weapon Lemko sought continued its countdown to zero. There were now only twelve days left.

*

Sara’s team met in the Hoffberg room early on Wednesday morning. Dan had been working on a summary of the responses to the missing persons spot on Saturday’s television news programme. The leads led in every direction, but there were two observations which intrigued him, and even more so after he’d called to verify them. Both descriptions came from Saturday, people who’d seen someone with long black hair, a man or a woman in a black clerical tunic, including the white collar of the clergy, driving a car emerging from the forest on the way to Stallarholmen. One person had even been able to remember the make of the car, a blue vintage Volvo 242 sedan.

Sara added the items to the box at the bottom of the whiteboard and said, “We’ve got to find this Volvo. It’s either the killer or an accomplice driving him out. Robert, I want you to start calling every single parish office within fifty kilometres of the Hoffberg house and see if you can identify it. Use the partial plate number we got from the kid I interviewed.”

Sara told the group about the details of her last interview with Kristina Hoffberg. “It could be things weren’t always sweet at the Hoffberg ranch. I’ve left a message on Delaney’s cell phone and we’ll see what he says when he comes in for an interview.”

She watched as Robert added Edgar Delaney’s name beside Kristina Hoffberg on the whiteboard. “Maybe this was a contract job,” he said.

There was a report from the dog team lying on the table. Sara read it as Robert went back to his desk. The dogs had discovered Spimler’s scent all over the place, but not on the trail leading from the garage to the car. This was making things difficult. They might have to revise their theory about who was responsible for the murder.

She put the report down just before Robert rose up from his desk, waving a new printout of a list. He approached Sara with small, enthusiastic yelps.

“I’ve got him!” he said. “I know who he is. Look at this.” He spread the printout over the table, pointing to the registration number and the name of the owner, “Teknologikka,” he said. “Do you see the address? Just north of Trelleborg.”

“Yes?” asked Sven. “And your explanation about why Trelleborg is so important to a murder in Stallarholmen, nearly four hundred miles away?”

“Here’s the reason,” said Robert, and he placed another piece of paper next to the first. “Do you see it now?” he asked, pointing to a document from the Companies Registration Office establishing a branch office in Trelleborg for Teknologikka Ltd, with their main office in Paldiski, Estonia.

“And no old Volvos at the parish offices in the vicinity?” asked Sara.

“No old Volvos at any parish offices in the country. The oldest cars registered to the church are two years old.”

Before Sven or Sara could ask, Robert continued, “And here’s the interesting part. I ran a check for both people and companies at that address in Trelleborg, and look at this.”

The printout of the companies and people listed at the Teknologikka Ltd branch office address included only two entries: the company and a man called Kim Lemko.

*

That afternoon Sara and Sven walked around the block to the headquarters of the National Security Service. Once inside she loosened her dark overcoat, revealing the fitness of her figure to the guard ogling her through the blast-proof security window. As she looked away in disgust, she saw the familiar figure of Niklas Shoreman exiting on the other side of the sluice that formed one of the last barriers between the real world and the world where lies were often moulded into the truths of tomorrow.

Shoreman tried to conceal his face under his hat, aware that government ministers were forbidden to interact with government workers, a requirement supposed to insure against political interference in the day-to-day running of this very small country.

Sara watched as he left through the reception, quickening his stride as he approached the large door of ancient oak concealing a thick steel armour-plating. What could the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs possibly be doing here in the heart of Spooksville? She regained her thoughts when the guard told Sara and Sven to move through the airtight sluice to be admitted to their meeting with Lars Ekman.

The meeting with the NSS was like a miniature class reunion, warm and friendly. Lars Ekman was accompanied by a young agent who spent a few seconds more than usual shaking Sara’s hand.

Ekman never wore a tie, but still made everyone else in the room feel like they were underdressed. He recalled the case involving a group of Neo-Nazis trying to assassinate an old, mentally retarded woman, purported to be a child of an important WW2 Nazi war criminal.

“Do you ever hear anything from the Yank? What was his name, Hurtree?”

“Yes,” said Sara, “I heard from him the day he left Stockholm two years ago, and I just got a Christmas card from him. I liked that guy. He was a bit, you know, American, but he was fun.”

“I remember,” said Ekman, stretching his arms high over his head, exercising his back muscles as he usually did during meetings. “He was a little difficult, at least when it came to following orders, but he did help us with some background information which would’ve been quite difficult to get otherwise. We were fortunate in being able to keep the story from going public. I doubt we’ll be so lucky with the current case.”

As they joked about the aging CID Lieutenant, it occurred to Sara that Ekman’s laugh was designed for a poker game; controlled and deliberate, a social appendage to the rest of his personality. She wondered if there was a real Lars Ekman buried in the wiry body he kept under such extreme control. They all sat down and she went through the details of the murder of ex-Parliamentarian Hoffberg.

Ekman listened as he usually did, his two-dimensional face frozen the whole time, not asking a single question, just staring at her. He seemed to create a vacuum which could only be filled by telling him everything he wanted to know.

Sara finished by telling him about the maps with the coordinates indicating the place where the MS Sally had gone down, and his face twitched. She stopped for a moment and stared back. They just looked at each other for nearly a minute, neither of them budging.

“Was that all?” Ekman broke first.

“Not quite,” said Sara, “but it would be interesting to know if my case is involved in something you guys are doing. I mean, just so we don’t get all tangled up when we try to run after the killer.”

“Do you have any suspects yet?”

“Just the neighbour, Martin Spimler. He appears to have had both motive and opportunity. We don’t know if he’s got an alibi, since we still can’t find him. We’re tapping his telephone at home for another couple of weeks just in case he calls his wife. Also, I’m not sure about the wife of the murder victim. She discovered the body, and says she was speaking to a friend at the time of the murder. Someone she worked with before she quit her job, an Irishman named Delaney. And then we’ve got witnesses, several people who saw someone in a dark suit driving away from the house in a dark blue Volvo 242, but the description seems kind of bizarre for the time being. They seem to think it was a clergywoman driving the car, so it doesn’t help much yet. We’ve got a name and address for the car that matches the description, but it’s down in Trelleborg. Malmö will help question the owner. Nothing explains the maps.”

Ekman stood up, walked to a map of Scandinavia that filled one wall of the conference room and pointed. “This is where the MS Sally sank to the bottom. Sara, you said the maps described this area. Did you bring them with you?”

Sara took both maps out of her briefcase, last year’s Christmas gift from her grandmother, who had told her that all important people had a briefcase, if only to carry their lunch to work. “Fresh out of Forensics,” she said, pointing to each map as she put them on the table in front of Ekman. “Hoffberg, Spimler.”

She quickly explained where both maps had been found as Ekman glanced at them. He noticed the pencilled dot on Spimler’s map before Sara could tell him about it. He went to his desk and returned with a plastic ruler, measuring the distance between the dot and the two closest corners of the grid where it was located. He went to a file and returned with a printout of a picture of the MS Sally and the coordinates of where she lay on the bottom of the Baltic, then he measured again. And again.

The sinking of the MS Sally had put the entire nation into a state of mourning. Every single member of the trade union representing the Swedish police force in Stockholm had been aboard, and almost all had perished. Everyone in the conference room knew someone who had died on the MS Sally, and there was a self-imposed silence as they all remembered.

Sara was the first to speak. “Spimler, our suspect for the Hoffberg killing, is a diver. We know he was involved in a dive out there, working for a company called Nordic Underwater Technology Scanners. Maybe the map came from that dive.”

“If that’s true, then there’s a problem. This dot doesn’t show where the Sally is located,” said Ekman. For the first time Sara got to see Ekman as a problem-solver, his granite face now furrowed with questions. “It’s close, probably a mile away, but anyone using this dot to find the MS Sally would never find her. It’s too dark down there to see more than twenty yards. We did security checks on everyone who was ever out there, so he’d be on file here.” As he finished speaking he nodded to the young NSS agent sitting next to him, who left the conference room.

Ekman looked at the file in front of him. “Hoffberg was on the Defence Committee for his political party, and he was involved in several investigations regarding the sinking, even those about protecting the wreck from being approached by anyone above or below water. While he was a Member of Parliament he would have had access to every secret there was regarding the MS Sally, and there might be one or two.”

“The Minister for Defence said that Hoffberg had posted some secret information about the investigation on his website. I don’t suppose we’ll be able to find out more about those secrets, in order to help us solve the murder?” Sara asked.

“No,” said Ekman, “of course not. But from what I understand, it’s why he decided not to run for office again.”

Sara brought her hand up to cover her lips, trying to conceal her chagrin, but her eyes flashed anger as she continued, “Well, we have several connections to Estonia. Hoffberg and Spimler took a trip there in June. We’re still tracking down what they did. Then there’s the Volvo we’re looking for. It’s owned by a company registered in Estonia, Teknologikka. The driver is listed as Kim Lemko. We also have another possible suspect, the murder victim’s wife. She was speaking to an Irishman just before she went home on the day of the murder. I was wondering if you had any information on him. He’s coming in tomorrow for questioning.”

“Do you mean Delaney?” asked Ekman. “I looked into that for you.” He looked over at Sven, who averted his eyes. “His father is in jail for robbing a bank, and suspected of belonging to an IRA splinter group. Call themselves ‘The New IRA’. Mostly just drug-smugglers who use bank thefts to supplement income when the Irish police intercept a shipment of narcotics. I doubt you’ll find a political connection to make Delaney a suspect.”

“My money is still on Spimler,” said Sven. “He’s got motive and opportunity.”

“I still think the wife could be involved in some way,” said Sara. “She gave me some kind of story about a cleaning lady that doesn’t check out. The telephone number I got goes to a family in Poland. When we asked them about this Magdalena woman, they didn’t seem to know anything about her, or anyone else who cleans houses in Sweden. The phone number could have been wrong, but it still seems a little strange.”

“Magdalena?” Ekman demanded, as he looked up from the maps he was holding. “Was there someone called Magdalena involved in this killing?”

“We don’t know that yet, sir,” said Sara. “It’s just a name on a postcard I found in the Hoffberg house, and the explanation Kristina Hoffberg gave was that it belonged to her cleaning lady.”

“Keep that name active in this case,” said Ekman, walking over to his filing cabinet. As he spoke the young NSS agent came back into the room, nodding his head to Ekman as he did so.

“Spimler checks out,” said the young agent. “Highest class available.”

“Well,” said Ekman, “I suppose you all have work to do. We do, anyway. Let’s keep each other informed on a regular basis. This case has the highest priority for us right now.”

Sven and Sara looked at each other, and rose to leave. “And Spimler?” asked Sven, looking straight into Ekman’s face “Can you tell us anything about the dives he did at the wreck of the MS Sally? Something that might help us find him?”

Ekman snapped back without hesitation, “I’ll let you know as soon as I have something I can release to you. The connections to Estonia are important. Find out any details about the victim or any of your suspects who went there, and why.” He blinked slowly and drew a breath. “I’ll do some checking with the Defence Department. I’ll talk to people who wouldn’t answer you if you asked them anything and we can meet again tomorrow. And Sara, nice to see you again.” He flashed a warm smile that caught her off guard.

Maybe Ekman is human after all.

*

Ekman was dialling a number as they left, and as the door closed behind her Sara heard him say, “Captain Peters? This is Lars Ekman of the National Security Service in Stockholm. Do you remember me?”

Sara had heard that name before.

Chapter 7

Ekman’s call from Stockholm caught Captain Charles Peters of the US Army CID staring at several yellowed suspension files spread out on his desk. They were all about a case soaked in the dark waters of the Baltic Sea, when the MS Sally had sunk in the middle of a stormy night several hours after sailing from Tallinn, Estonia’s medieval heritage capital. For more than a year, thousands of grieving relatives and friends had persistently badgered the governments of four countries to provide a definitive answer as to why the ship had gone down.

A month ago an informant had tipped off one of Captain Peters’ field agents working in Estonia that a large sum of money had been paid for the operating manual to a Russian Shkval torpedo. In Western defence circles they were sometimes called Squalls because of the noise they made on sonar devices. For those who feared them they were known as Rocketfish.

For Captain Peters this was the first time anything tangible had surfaced with regard to the events leading to the end of so many innocent lives. It might be nothing, just a random event with no connection to his case, or it could bring him back to the cold, windy night in September when he’d called the hotline to Swedish Customs. Captain Peters was determined to find out which was correct.

Among the passengers who’d lost their lives was one of his own field agents. There had been accusations of faulty workmanship on the MS Sally, suggestions that a rogue wave had broken onto her bow, stripping away the bow visor that opened onto the car deck, and even a mysterious explosion which theoretically had blown a hole in the bottom of the hull, sending her to the bottom in record time.

Very little in the way of conclusive evidence was ever found, in spite of millions of dollars spent trying to contain speculation about conspiracies. Television talk shows in the Baltic countries fuelled public imagination and several pseudo-documentary films had been produced suggesting bizarre theories for the source of the disaster.

While he listened to the man on the other end of the phone, Peters held the file containing five pages of the secret report which would have put a stop to all the public questions in Sweden. He weighed it in his hand, hoping to get closure.

“We’ve spoken to each other before, Captain Peters. My name is Lars Ekman from the Swedish National Security Service. You might remember our last contact a few years ago regarding your predecessor, a retired army lieutenant, John Hurtree,” said Ekman.

Peters drew a quick breath. “OK, what’s he done this time? Last I heard he was back in the States.”

“Yes, I suppose he is. I’m not calling about him. It’s about a telephone call you made last year to the Swedish Customs, about some smugglers making a technology shipment from Tallinn, you know, in Estonia? We have a case that may be related to the ship that went down and I was wondering if we could meet and perhaps compare notes.”

“Funny that you should call about that,” said Peters, closing the files marked Top Secret. “I was just, uh, thinking about that case. It might be interesting to compare notes, so to speak. Who travels? I’ve never been to Stockholm.”

“OK, I made the call, so I’ll arrange for your ticket if you pay your hotel and living expenses,” said Ekman.

“That sounds fine to me. We work on a tight budget down here. The criminals always seem to have more money than we do.”

“Yes,” said Ekman, “it makes you wonder where they get it all from. Captain Peters, can I ask you if you ever work with the CIA?”

“If I did I’d never tell you. Anyway, we usually have different agendas. We’re not spooks at the CID.”

“Fine. Can you be here this week?”

“I can fly out tomorrow. I won’t need a hotel.”

“Good, I’ll make the arrangements. My office will send you the flight details. I’ll be at the airport to pick you up. It’ll be good to finally meet.”

“Sure will, what’s the weather like up there? It’s raining like crazy here.”

“Crisp, I think you say in English,” said Ekman. “Frosty in the morning, cold enough to make you look for your winter jacket and gloves when you’re in the shade, warm enough to make you take them off in the sunshine. And the sun is shining into my office right now, but you never know up here.”

*

There was no sun at street level for Sara Markham. Glad she’d worn her jacket, she felt the chill of the afternoon as soon as she’d left the NSS wing to walk around the block to her own office. This part of Stockholm included several city blocks devoted to justice. From here it was a four-block walk to the offices of the District Attorney, ending with a spurt within sight of the King’s Bridge, where the wind seemed to blow every day of the year.

Sara needed to request an extension of the wiretap on Kristina Hoffberg’s telephone, and she thought meeting up with Cantsten would give them a chance to get off to a better start. She found Cantsten’s room with no trouble and knocked as she walked through the open door.

Sara wondered if Cantsten’s desk had been built with a device which repelled documents, pushing them automatically into the appropriate binders. Sara’s own desk looked like a mess to others, although she had it so well organised in her mind she never wasted time looking for a document.

Cantsten was reading her computer monitor, which cast two square, blue images onto her glasses. The bookcase behind her was full of binders in tidy rows, grouped by colours, all of them exactly one inch from the outer edge. Sara was sure Cantsten’s brain didn’t contain grey matter like the rest of the human race; in her head everything would be divided into black-and-white compartments.

“Yvonne,” said Sara.

Cantsten kept her face focused on the screen, although Sara could see her eyes had shifted to briefly rest on her.

“Could I speak to you about the Hoffberg wiretap?”

“Yes,” said Cantsten, without looking away from the monitor. “You can enter any new evidence on a Form B22 and leave it in my inbox. I’ll take care of it when I can.”

“Actually I was hoping we could speak about it.”

“Form B22,” said Cantsten. “In here.” She pointed to her inbox without looking up. For a long, raging second Sara hoped Cantsten would someday give her a reason to be investigated. She promised herself that she would be very, very thorough if she ever got the chance.

“OK,” said Sara, “B22. Inbox. I’ll try to find time to do it between catching crooks.” She could see Cantsten as a child, spending hours playing with her mother’s button box, sorting them by the number of holes, then by colour, and then size. Sara braced against the wind on her way back, imagining Cantsten with her favourite buttons on a rug. She was sure she could hear Cantsten’s thoughts trying to imagine how the holes had been made.

*

Martin Spimler’s wife had spent another lonely, tearful evening going through her husband’s things in an effort to find a clue to his whereabouts. She’d opened a bottle of wine and rummaged through the contents of his desk. It contained nothing that would divulge where he would be, no addresses or telephone numbers for secret girlfriends, or what would have been worse for her, boyfriends. Still, he was gone, and with no explanation.

Behind the desk there was an entire bookshelf filled with Martin’s reports, going back nearly ten years. He’d kept at it even when he left the military and began working for a private company that worked mostly out in the North Sea oilfields. Almost all the reports were simple dive logs, recording the mission, the weather and water conditions, the tools used and the results. She went through them, seeking an answer, even a hint of some kind of mistake that could be made while operating hundreds of feet under the surface, hoping against the darkest explanation to her husband’s disappearance, but willing to accept whatever surfaced.

When the MS Sally went to the bottom in September of 1994, several commissions had been funded to determine what lay behind the sinking and the tremendous loss of life that ensued. Prior to that the Swedish government had made their own inquiry, and specialists in the field were contacted. NUTS had entered a bid and the company was contracted for what was called an initial investigation. She knew her husband had been chosen to do the dive, and signed several non-disclosure agreements, promising never to divulge to anyone except the commission what he saw as he examined the wreck.

He was given the task of recovering the ship’s log, and reporting on the status of the vehicles on the car deck, especially the larger semis, making sure that none of them contained cargoes that might be dangerous to the environment if allowed to remain in the sea. They never spoke in detail about any of his dives at home, and he only referred to the dive to the Sally in single words: ‘horrible’, ‘terrible’ or ‘tragic’.

*

Spimler began the search in October, only a few weeks after the sinking, knowing he would very likely have to see the remains of the unfortunate victims, and that he was not allowed to document, or remove them from their watery graves, despite massive requests to recover their bodies.

The Arctic winter weather on the surface was unruly. Currents generated by the gale-force winds only days before hampered his progress to reach the ship, and he had great difficulty entering the gaping hole left in the bow.

After several dives to inspect the bridge and retrieve documents, he swam quickly through some of the passenger areas, noting that the bodies of many of the passengers were grouped in the stairwells, and he thought he could read in their sightless eyes the feelings of panic they must have felt trying to escape. He swallowed hard and swam on to enter the car deck of the MS Sally, and found it a shamble of automobiles and lorries piled one on top of the other.

Martin swam between the debris, careful not to get caught by any of the sharp edges protruding out of the darkness. Most of the trucks were full of ordinary loads; steel pipe, finished meat products, and textiles. He was happy not to encounter any more dead bodies.

He was nearly finished with the dive when the single beam of his spotlight picked up the contour of a long wooden box protruding from the side of a truck carrying bags of Estonian cement. The box had Russian markings, and he swam over to it, pulling away the tarp which covered the load. He held his breath as the beam of the spotlight lit up the Cyrillic letters 111-ва.

Martin nearly dropped the light in shock, and he backpedalled in the water. He swam closer again, knowing that a SHKVAL had to be inside, certain it shouldn’t be there, and convinced he didn’t want it on the surface. He had only fifteen minutes left of air for this dive and he made a quick decision that would affect the rest of his life, and in the end shorten it prematurely.

He surfaced and asked the dive crew for some inflatable lift bags and an electric propeller unit he could use to move some debris. In half an hour he was under the surface again with fresh cylinders of air. Using the inflated lift bags he managed to achieve neutral buoyancy for the box, and he pushed it in front of him like a ten yard-long needle, with the electric propeller unit mounted at the back, removing it from the truck and aiming it out the open bow door. He continued nearly twenty minutes in a westerly direction until he found the wreck of a trawler which had gone down a decade earlier and he placed the box alongside the keel, covering the markings with a layer of silt. He swam back to the wreck of the Sally with the lifting bags and the propeller and then swam up to the surface to end that day’s dive.

Martin Spimler never divulged to the commission what he had found, and he managed to keep the secret until the day Hoffberg had hatched the plot to blackmail the government.

His wife had just discovered the only reference he’d ever made of the dive. While exploring the contents of one of the boxes in her husband’s closet, she found a red plastic folder. She removed the dive protocol and a tourist brochure describing Estonia and the Baltic region. Stuck behind the brochure was a street map of Tallinn. She poured another glass of wine before unfolding the map, not sure if it was the alcohol, her grief or a smudge, but it seemed as if there was a dot pencilled on the brochure’s map of the Baltic near a town named Paldiski. She looked again, and this time she was sure that it was an intentional dot, and next to it she saw a strange group of letters in her husband’s handwriting: торпеда.

She couldn’t understand Russian, but could recognise the language with no difficulty. Her eyes brimmed with tears, and even though this clue offered her no explanation, she knew she had to call the police tomorrow morning. She fell asleep wondering what торпеда meant in Swedish.

In the meantime a supercavitating, rocket-powered torpedo lay on the bottom of the lake in the centre of Stockholm, the clock controlling the nuclear warhead in its nose counting down, defying the efforts of the new owner, the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States, to locate it.

*

Niklas Shoreman’s visit to Lars Ekman had alerted the NSS to the reality that Hoffberg’s threat might be more substantial than the Prime Minister was willing to admit. After speaking to Captain Peters, Ekman sat alone in his room, his right hand poised over the telephone which would bring him into immediate contact with the Prime Minister just by dialling a three-digit number.

He picked up the phone, punched two of the numbers, then hesitated before dialling the final number. He dropped the receiver onto the cradle, stood up and placed both thin case files into his safe. The yellow sticky-note with Captain Peters’ flight details clung momentarily to his fingers as he put it in his jacket pocket. He put on his raincoat and hat, then turned off the light.

He would have to be just a little more convinced before he blew the whistle. Maybe his meeting with Captain Peters the following day would provide the certainty he needed. One of the case files in the safe bore the name of Schneller, and the other Magdalena.

Chapter 8

Ekman drove to the airport north of Stockholm and stood outside the customs gate as Peters came through.

He was easy to spot, the only passenger wearing a khaki US Army uniform. Ekman smiled to greet him.

Peters’ body filled out his uniform well. He was tall all the way up from his polished combat boots. He would have worn his hair short in a crew-cut if there’d been any to cut. Peters had never been to Sweden before, and he felt a tingle of expectancy.

Lars Ekman was shorter than Peters had imagined him. The long, grey, bureaucratic raincoat belied the firm, bear-like grip of his handshake. They were both well-trained and this first greeting gave them insight even before they spoke.

“Hello, Captain Peters? I’m Lars Ekman of the Swedish National Security Service. You can call me Lasse.”

“Pleased to meet you, Lasse. Captain Charles Peters, US Army CID. You can call me Charlie.”

They exchanged small talk about the flight and the weather as they walked to the parking lot, then got into Ekman’s black Saab to drive into the city.

Ekman took a route that included a mini-tour of Stockholm, pointing out the sights as they got closer to the hotel. Peters had a map of the city on his lap and he followed Ekman’s commentary with interest.

“And the US Embassy?” asked Peters. “Could we run by that so I can see where it is? I’ll probably have to check in there before I leave.”

“Sure,” said Ekman. He made a quick left turn through a roundabout. “This is a very exclusive area of Stockholm,” he said, driving down Strand Way. “Flats here cost millions of dollars just to buy a lease.”

“I won’t be buying one this week,” said Peters. “I’m surprised anyone has a million dollars after your taxes. I’ve read that they’re pretty steep.”

“Yes,” said Ekman, “we believe in high taxation. But then we get a lot for it, I think. For example, this concert hall to the left is subsidised by our taxes. And that fortification there in front of us is your embassy. That’s where your tax money goes.”

There was a long line of young people standing outside the embassy, waiting to be admitted for visa applications. Ten years ago the line would have been equally as long, but inside the building. Today even the embassy employees who worked behind one of the most secure perimeters in Sweden felt uneasy, a sign that the basic message of terrorism had made its point. No one could feel safe. Ekman circled back through the centre of the city to the offices of the NSS.

Lars Ekman began, “Captain Peters, uh, Charlie, let’s get some ground rules agreed upon before we start. Neither of us will make notes of anything the other person says, OK?”

Peters nodded.

“Any information revealed by you or me is on a deniable basis. If any of this information were ever to be made public, we will deny it, and call you a liar. I would expect you to do the same.”

Peters nodded again.

“Finally, none of this obligates either of us to any action, in spite of what is revealed, and I will be your only point of contact in Sweden. And I mean the only contact.”

“Aw, hell, Lasse, I was kinda hoping to have a chance to meet with that sweet little Sara that Hurtree talked to when he was up here.” Peters laughed. “But I guess you can begin now.”

Ekman ignored the joke about Sara Markham and began reading from his file. “You called our customs hotline last year, and according to this report you said you were convinced the MS Sally was carrying smuggled Russian weapons technology on its way to Stockholm.”

Peters nodded.

“And I suppose you know the MS Sally sank that same night?”

Peters nodded again.

“And now a man who sat on the Parliament’s own Defence Committee has been murdered. We have evidence which indicates some kind of link to the MS Sally.”

Peters sat there, listening intently, offering nothing in reply. Ekman had met his match in the game of poker face.

“So perhaps you could provide me with a few more details about this weapons-smuggling that took place. I’d also like to know if you have any ideas about what might have caused the sinking. There has always been a certain amount of controversy in our country surrounding the tragedy.”

Peters opened up a small brown leather portfolio and read from some notes he’d already prepared. “What I can tell you is, we were following a drug dealer who was providing drugs to members of the US Army in Germany. Most of the imports then came from Afghanistan via Belarus, and then to Switzerland via diplomatic channels. When the Russians left Estonia in 1994, the market shifted and drugs then went through to Estonia, then into the EU via both Sweden and Finland, where they were rerouted back into the countries of the EU which had signed the Schengen Agreement, eradicating borders between the countries that signed it. We’d tracked the man importing the stuff from Afghanistan via Belarus and Russia into Estonia. You must have heard of this before. We liaised with your officer in Gothenburg who did narcotics.”

“Yes, but the weapons – how did they get into the picture?”

“We were about to bust the narco with the help of the Estonian police when this weapons deal pops up. There he is, our villain, some Russian technician who had become stateless when Estonia became a nation, meeting with a man we later found out was from MI6, and they were very busy.”

“Did you say MI6?” Ekman lowered his head and shifted his position in his chair. “The Brits?”

“Funny you guys haven’t heard about this. Yes, the Brits.”

“Our intel told us it was your guys, the CIA.” Ekman tightened his grip on his case file.

“You say tomato, I say potato. Anyway, we listened a little longer. After a couple of days of surveillance we got a line on what was being sold and where it would be going. Finally, we see this truck getting loaded onto a ship, the MS Sally. The deal had been done, all handshakes and smiles. I called your hotline number. Unfortunately, the ship never arrived.”

“Did you ever arrest the Russian?” asked Ekman.

“The seller? Oh yeah, he went into jail and out like a frog thrown onto a frying pan. There were technicalities and his lawyer seemed to be in bed with every judge in Estonia. But he got the message. We haven’t heard of him since. He probably made enough off the weapons deal to buy his own little country and disappear.”

“What kind of weapon was it?” asked Ekman.

“Sorry, I can’t go into that kind of detail. We sent a member of our team to follow the truck when it came ashore, and he was supposed to hook up with the Technical Attaché at our embassy in Stockholm, and help Swedish Customs when the truck came ashore. Since the ship never arrived, there wasn’t much we could do. If we’d known then that MI6 was the buyer, we’d have had a celebration party instead of calling you guys.”

“I was hoping you could assist me to see if there was any connection to the murder we have on our hands,” said Ekman.

“You’ll have to find the connection yourself, if there is one,” said Peters. “There was someone you might have heard of. He was acting as the middleman in the weapons deal, too. He lived in Sweden as far as we could figure out. Our military intel had him pegged as an ex-Stasi agent who had been providing the East Germans with information about disarmament discussions in the Scandinavian governments, when there was such a thing as East Germany. He dropped out of sight after the weapons-smuggling deal went through, but he popped up again about a month ago. And it was connected to the same weapons technology.”

“Who?” Ekman played with his pencil.

“We never knew his real name, just a codename used to communicate with him. Schneller. You guys must have heard of him.”

“We thought Schneller lived on the border between Germany and Poland,” said Ekman. He got up from his chair, beginning to slowly pace back and forth.

“Yeah, the success of these agents is built on their ability to keep hidden. Maybe he was your man in Parliament,” said Peters, smiling widely at his obvious joke.

“No,” said Ekman. Peters noticed Ekman hadn’t taken it as a joke at all. “Not Schneller. There have been other Stasi agents who have been members of the Swedish Parliament. At least that’s what the Rosenholz list showed. We’ve been asked to keep them secret, but we know who they were. So Schneller would be living in Sweden. Interesting. Do you know where?”

“No,” said Peters. “We always clocked him at the border, and since we, uh, don’t have any official way to follow him in Sweden, we just left it at that. We assumed you guys had a handle on him. All this would have been easier if Sweden had been a NATO member.”

“Perhaps, but there might have been other problems if we had been. Anyway, no, I’m afraid we didn’t have a – what did you say? – hand on him. Did he use any consistent ID while travelling?” asked Ekman.

“No, he always used cash-ticketed transportation: trains, ferries or buses. We only knew he would be on the move from intercepting his codename when he dealt with customers.”

“We heard about Schneller before the wall went down, but we haven’t heard about him since. What would he be doing today?”

Peters stared down to his notes. The sound of the zipper seemed to fill the room as he closed the leather portfolio, and looked up at Ekman again. “We think he’s a hired killer.”

“Can you provide me with any background information on him?” Ekman leaned forward over the table. “The Stasi file on him was, let’s say, skimpy, to say the least. It was as though someone had doctored it before we got it.”

“As far as I know there’s only one person who had any real personal knowledge of Schneller, but he’s retired.”

“Perhaps he could be contacted – I mean, this is an important case for us. If Schneller is connected to--, uh,” Ekman regrouped this thoughts, “The murder of politicians is a matter of great concern in Sweden. Besides, there might be something else involved, possibly a larger threat to the state.”

“Yeah, I guess another politician’s death would be sensitive up here. Hey, did you ever catch the guy who killed your Prime Minister?”

“Yes, we’re sure we did – the trial was a mess and he got off, but as far as we’re concerned that’s a closed case. The murderer died of an overdose a few years ago.”

“Congratulations, then most of the job got done. I think you might already know the guy who could help with identifying Schneller. It’s John Hurtree, you know, the ex-CID detective who was here a few years ago?”

“I was afraid you were going to say that,” said Ekman. As he spoke, a young agent poked his head inside the door, signalling to him. “Excuse me,” he said to Peters, getting out of his chair. “I’ll be right back.”

Ekman was only gone a few minutes, and he held a black-and-white photograph when he returned. He spoke quietly, as if he were afraid someone outside this highly secure room within the country’s most secure perimeter might be listening. “We have just received photographic evidence regarding the murder case we spoke of earlier. We found a map which relates to the case and there was a dot on it. I sent a diver out there earlier today and this is a picture of what he found. An empty box.” Ekman pushed the photograph over to Peters.

“Oh, sweet Jesus,” erupted Peters, as he read the Cyrillic letters. “And you said it was empty?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so.”

“I think it’s time for all of us to be afraid,” said Peters. “Do you know what this is?”

“I’m assuming it’s the weapon that was on board the Sally when she went down,” said Ekman. “Can you tell me what it is?”

“Not without clearance,” said Peters. “But you don’t have to ask me. Get on the internet and punch in the letters you see on the box, 111-ва.”

“We’ve already done that. Do you know if it was armed?”

“I can’t answer that either,” said Peters. “Hey, maybe the Russians got it. I heard they were mighty pissed off when they found out we finally managed to buy one.”

“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 being 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 when 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.

“Yes, of course. I have my own insurance.” And I’ll need it to cover the damages to your face if you keep this up, Hurtree added to himself.

*

The train trip to Heidelberg took only a few hours. Hurtree glanced out at the scenery as it flashed by. Germany had been a very different place when he first saw it from a jeep as a soldier in the Second World War. Smoke was always rising on the horizon in those days, a reminder that people were dying only a few miles away. Today the air was crystal clear, and there was probably more smoke and smog in his hometown of Philadelphia than he’d ever seen when he lived in Europe after the war ended.

The high-speed train gouged a cylinder of space and time in the early afternoon, and he felt tired after the Atlantic flight. He was getting too old to be jumping around continents as he’d once done, and a time difference of six hours left him sapped, but he was too afraid he’d miss his stop if went to sleep, so he concentrated on the farmhouses dotting the horizon.

He wondered if there would ever be another war in Europe. There were times when Hurtree felt certain there would be; Europe was just too diverse a place to incorporate all the different cultures, histories and languages that made up the continent. On the other hand, he thought, there had only been three armed conflicts since the end of the war in 1945: Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Bosnia, Croatia – no, that was four, or was it five if you counted Corsica? Or six if the Basque countries in Spain were included, or maybe seven if Europe was as big as Israel and Palestine. And the conflict between Turkey and Greece over Cyprus – did they get on the list? So maybe the problem was that there was war in Europe constantly; it just didn’t manage to spill over the entire continent at the same time, and you could easily get away from it if you were lucky.

The spires of the cathedral in Heidelberg were now visible through the window, and Hurtree remembered the first time he saw them. He wondered if he could find a way back to Europe. This was where he had become a man, where he’d grown up.

“This is where I belong,” he mumbled to himself. Being an aging retiree in the US wasn’t agreeing with him. He longed for easy Sunday afternoons with European soccer on the television, a beer in his hand and a crowd of locals whose only real interest in life was to swear allegiance to a soccer or rugby team. He missed rugby. Americans didn’t know what real football was, encased in those suits of armour and helmets.

*

Hurtree took a taxi to CID headquarters, where he asked to see Captain Charles Peters. The taxi was allowed in through the sentry. Peters met him outside after it pulled up to the building where he had his office, and opened the door before the car had stopped.

“You look like shit,” said Peters.

“You are shit,” said Hurtree, and both men laughed as they bumped each other in the chest with the army greeting.

“Time hasn’t changed you at all,” said Peters. “You’re as ugly as ever.”

“I know, but I’ve conquered time,” said Hurtree. “Here’s my secret. I drink copious amounts of Guinness and raw vodka, I get up every morning at 5 am, and I’m getting too slow to catch women anymore, so I’m wasting less and less energy on sex.”

“Shit, if I followed that I’d be dead in a week.”

The two men walked towards Peters’ office on the base. When they arrived Peters shut the door and the tone of his voice changed; became lower, more serious.

“Do you know why you’re here?”

“You said something about Schneller.” Hurtree looked up as he groped for his notebook. “You said I might be able to help you identify him. I saw him a couple of times but he was a lot younger then. If he hasn’t aged or had plastic surgery then I guess he’d be pretty easy to pick out, but he might just have added a few years to his belt.”

“We’ve tried to photograph him several times, but he never shows up at any of the places we’ve tried to lure him to.”

“That’s Schneller alright. He had a sixth sense about that, or someone on the inside. I always wondered if I was the only one who ever got to see his face.”

“How did that happen?”

“He was using a Danish addict to make contact with a guy who was going to sell him a shit load of M-16s out of an arms dump in the mountains outside Frankfurt. We had her pegged, and she was easy to follow: lived at great hotels but dressed like a tramp, probably was one. I followed her one afternoon and she went into a lingerie shop in Frankfurt with this guy and I stood outside to get them on film, but then they both came out and bumped into me. Only thing was, this time he was a she, a knockout babe, and he even wore high heels.”

“Schneller, a cross-dresser? Didn’t you ask her for a date?” asked Peters. “Are you sure he didn’t just lose you in the shop?”

“It was his ring that gave him away,” said Hurtree. “He wore a big gold ring on the ring finger of his right hand. The guy had it on when he went in and the broad had it on when she came out. I’m sure of what I saw. I followed them until the Danish bitch split off and then I went after him. He lost me by going into one of those round, metal urinals in the square, and me thinking ‘gotcha’ the whole time I waited for him to come out.”

Peters’ eyes widened, waiting for Hurtree to finish.

Hurtree smiled, recognising the irritation the silence was producing. “He never came out. I waited there over an hour, and when I opened the door he was gone, vanished.”

“Well I knew he was good, but that is pretty fucking amazing. Did you ever find how he did it?”

“Yup. The guy was an expert on tunnels. He used pissers and telephone booths that had been placed on top of manholes leading to the sewer system. There weren’t many, but he knew how to use them. It was like chasing the Third Man, you know, from the film?”

“The Third Man drowned in the film. I doubt if we’re going to get that lucky. Can you help a forensic artist with a drawing?”

“As a girl or as a guy?” asked Hurtree.

“Both, if you can remember it. And give me any other details you think will help us catch him.”

“He must have done something very bad.”

“We’ll find out how bad when we catch him,” said Peters, leading Hurtree into the attractive young artist’s office and pointed to him as he told her, “Here’s the guy I told you about. Pick his brains if you find any. And Hurtree, keep your mind on business.”

“Oh hell, yes,” said Hurtree, sitting down to help the artist sketch the two pictures that would soon end up on Ekman’s desk. Peters let Hurtree keep the third sketch; a very good likeness of Peters that Hurtree had described in jest.

*

Schneller had begun his career as a murderer when he was thirty-five years old. Previously, his mission in Sweden had been to negotiate high-level purchases of weapons systems for the East German government, and collect information regarding the status of the internal debate on disarmament taking place behind the scenes in the Swedish Parliament. His dual sexuality and language skills gave him access to both men and women, and in ways that he could use to blackmail his victims.

He was attractive and sociable, regardless of which guise he was using, and it was easy for him to befriend women, luring them into situations where he could obtain either the information or the next step he required.

His first killing had been a simple task. A pair of women journalists working for Swedish Television had been investigating one of his purchases of several truckloads of tank ammunition supposedly bound for India, but rerouted to Czechoslovakia instead. Schneller, dressed as a dark-haired woman, had followed them to a bar in Stockholm and offered to contact a man who would give them detailed information on the weapons-smuggling deal they had managed to sniff out. It was too much for the two journalists to pass up and they drove Schneller to the cheap apartment on Bonde Street which he used when he was in Stockholm, close to the Hammarby Canal in the southern part of the city.

It was nearly freezing, and they readily accepted the tea he offered to warm them up, laced with a drug that would incapacitate them and make it easy for him to carry them into the bathroom and drown them. He’d even added salt to the water in the bath tub to make it appear to a forensic examiner that the women had drowned in the Baltic Sea. He then placed them in their car and drove it off the edge of the canal. There were no witnesses to see the car splash into the harbour on that cold, rainy November night.

They weren’t discovered until six months later, when a diver was clearing debris from the bottom of the canal. A forensic examination noted the anomaly of the salty, chlorinated water in their lungs that definitely didn’t come from the brine of the Baltic Sea, but their deaths were still classified as an accident and the case was closed, testimony to Schneller’s excellent connections within the Government. By then Schneller had increased his reputation as someone who could handle anything thrown his way. He was given the use of a house in southern Sweden, close to the ferry terminal to Germany, as a place to relax.

Schneller’s life was uncomplicated for the next five years. He admired the hardworking Swedish people, their attention to detail and willingness to subject themselves to the social engineers of the greater good. There were times when he felt Sweden had progressed further than his own country in realising those Marxist goals describing the ideal Communist state. His reports to East Berlin always included positive comments regarding the work of Swedish politicians, including Niklas Shoreman, who’d helped him make contact with the government agency responsible for licencing the export of weapons.

During his early years in Sweden he’d used the Red Army Fraction attack on the German Embassy in Stockholm as a way to find potential agents at beer parties thrown for university students, managing to recruit a young student who later would become his prime source of information after she’d completed her degree in Information Services. From her position in the Swedish Parliament’s archives, she would provide him with detailed and powerful information regarding the status of Swedish thinking on international trade treaties and defence contracting. She’d chosen her own codename, taken from a Biblical figure hated in some circles and loved in others: Magdalena.

In 1989 the unthinkable happened. The Berlin Wall, which had for such a long time divided the two major forces in Europe, was conquered by the inadequacies of Schneller’s own government. Instead of shooting the massive crowds at the wall, the soldiers started to allow them to pass through to the West, jubilant and still alive. Then, without explanation and in full view of the entire world, the crowd was allowed to destroy the wall, the symbol of division which had kept them prisoners for so many years. Only one year later the entire government collapsed and Schneller’s country had been integrated into one giant Deutschland.

As Schneller sat in front of his Swedish TV, watching the crowd tear into the wall, he felt they were breaking into the sanctity of his home. A feeling of dread and fear in his heart mirrored the freedom he saw in the faces of the crowd.

He knew he’d have to act quickly to erase records of his background; he was now living in a very dangerous world. Schneller had made a frenzied trip back to East Berlin’s monumental administrative zone of Lichtenberg, to find himself surrounded by other Stasi agents as they all scrambled for the files which could identify them, burning them in small piles on the concrete floor of the archive. Schneller made sure his own file didn’t disappear, that would be too obvious, so he carefully destroyed all but two pages, one divulging his birthplace, the other his codename in a list of several other codenames, none connected to real people.

After his return to the house outside of Trelleborg in southern Sweden he spent several anxious months planning a new life. It turned out he had no reason to worry. A man of his skills and background could always count on employment by the men who ran countries where fear and subterfuge were the beacons guiding the direction their society could take.

Before the week ended he was a self-employed weapons dealer and killer for hire, an entrepreneur in the business of calamity and death.

Now, like all salesmen, he was trying to dodge the warranty; the assurance that his word was as good as the gold he’d taken for the sale. Misplaced trust would have its consequences, even for Schneller.

Chapter 10

Sara got to work early on Friday morning, still tired from another night of problem-solving dreams. The tapes included several of Hoffberg’s appearances on television debate programmes, and she would have turned off the TV if it hadn’t been part of the job. They were boring and repetitive. Hoffberg always began by tipping his head forward, looking down over his glasses towards his opponent, then turning to smile into the camera as he rubbed the tip of his nose. He then proceeded to devastate the logic of the argument which had just been heard by using emotional arguments which were difficult to counter.

Hoffberg was certain humanity was on the brink of destruction and had itself to blame. His opponent in the debate was always the person who was most guilty. Hoffberg offered proof he was right by referencing hundreds of scientists who had the same point of view, but could never actually provide a name to be contacted. He made logical leaps that left even the most intellectual of opponents gasping for breath as they tried to rebuild the kaleidoscope pattern Hoffberg built in the air with his eager hands, as he interrupted and waved off opposing arguments. It was clear Hoffberg was totally convinced he was right, and woe to those who didn’t agree with him.

On almost every tape Sara watched, there were references to the weaknesses of democratic rule. At first she thought they were mirthful, ironic comments. On the final tape, however, made only a few months before Hoffberg had quit Parliament, the tone of his voice had become hard and his eyes narrowed as he interrupted his opponent again.

“Democracy isn’t the solution,” said Hoffberg, slamming his fist on the glass table that separated him from his opponent, “it’s the problem! We’re forced to follow the will of a majority of people who aren’t equipped with the intelligence necessary to discover the only solution that’s adequate to save our world from impending destruction. Peace is the only answer, but it seems very many democratic institutions are making this peace impossible. What we need is a new order, someone who can take over and make peace the only option.” At that point Hoffberg got up off the sofa and left the television studio. For him the debate seemed to be over.

Another tape included Hoffberg standing in front of a small group of young people, demonstrating against the United States’ involvement in Grenada. “Peace now, peace now,” they shouted behind Hoffberg, and he took the microphone from the seasoned reporter’s hand to begin a long, ranting monologue about the need for a single, strong leader who could stand up to the misuse of power exhibited by the superpowers of the world.

There was a mark in the tape indicating where the television news editor had clipped it, robbing television viewers of the true nature of Hoffberg’s personality. In the unedited version of the tape, Hoffberg’s eyes seemed to glaze over as he continued, and his speech became short and staccato. He wasn’t facing the group behind him; he was looking directly into the television camera, hoping that he was speaking to the nation, or perhaps the entire world.

Sara closed her eyes for a minute as Hoffberg ranted on. She began to hear a likeness between Hoffberg’s way of speaking and some of Hitler’s speeches she’d heard on documentaries just before she’d turned them off.

For one shuddering minute she became frightened as she heard Hoffberg say, “And they will learn, these forces of evil and the governments that support them. They will learn by example that there is only one choice for humanity: peace. And if they don’t choose it, then the followers of the cause of peace will bring it to their doorsteps. These silly men will have no choice but to choose the right answer, or be obliterated by their own foolishness!”

This was a large-calibre threat. Sara understood why the television news editors had removed it from the news blurb, if for no other reason than to protect Hoffberg, who was clearly not having a good day.

She went back through the tapes again, searching for anything that looked like the image of the priest witnesses had mentioned, but it was a dead end. When she went back to her office someone had put an envelope on her chair, and it contained a translation of the single word in the Cyrillic alphabet that Mrs Spimler had found on the brochure from her husband’s trip to Estonia: torpedo.

Sara repeated the word several times after reading it, and stared out the window, still covered with snow and raindrops from last night’s storm. It was eight o’clock in the morning and the sun had been struggling up over the horizon for an hour now, leaving only ten more hours of daylight until darkness began again. Sara was drained; another full night of fruitless work trying to find the connection between a simple murder and a complexity in the fog beyond.

Next month the days would be even shorter, and she’d have about eight hours of daylight if the clouds didn’t cover the sky. By December there would be only six hours of daylight.

She made a promise to herself to book a trip to some sun-drenched Mediterranean beach if her bank account allowed for it. “torpedo,” she repeated to herself, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

Sara picked up the phone, hesitated, put it back on the cradle, then picked it up again to dial Ekman.

“Ekman.” His voice was as dry as medieval parchment.

“This is Sara Markham.” Sara tried hard to hide the tremor in her voice. “I’ve been looking at some video tapes of Hoffberg and I think there’s something we should talk about. I’m not sure it fits into the murder yet, but it’s something you might want to know anyway.”

“Yes?” Ekman stretched out the word to a question which had to be answered.

“I’m sitting in the Hoffberg room. Do you think you could come over for a minute or two to look at one of the tapes? We also have something that Spimler’s wife left us, a word written in Russian which I just had translated.”

“Yes?” he said again.

“Torpedo. The word was torpedo, and it was written on a brochure from a trip to Estonia Spimler made a couple of months ago.”

“I’ll be there in about five minutes.” Ekman’s line went dead without him saying goodbye.

*

A minute later Sven came into the Hoffberg room and closed the door. “Ekman called. He’ll be here soon. He said something about a brochure Spimler’s wife left with us. I hadn’t heard of it, and you called Ekman before telling me?”

“Sorry,” said Sara. “You’ve been tied up with all this budget crap. It didn’t seem like much by itself, but after looking at some of the tapes of Hoffberg’s television appearances it seemed important. It might be nothing, but I thought Ekman would appreciate knowing about it.”

“As would I.” Sven’s face reddened. “And I’d like to know what you’ve managed to see on the tapes. Have you found Spimler yet?” he asked, knowing full well if Sara had done so, he would have been the first to know.

“No, not yet,” she said.

“So tell me about the tapes,” he said, as Ekman walked into the room. “No, on second thought, don’t say anything, just show both of us what you’ve found that is so important.”

“Welcome back to the real world,” Ekman said to Sven, settling into a chair. “Are your numbers adding up?” Then he turned to Sara and asked, “Did you ever hear anything from the Yank? What was his name, Hurtree?”

“Yes,” she said, “I just got a card saying he might be coming to Stockholm soon. Why?”

“No reason,” said Ekman. “Just thought I’d ask.” He picked up the telephone, dialled a number and spoke to someone on the other end. “Hello, Jyrki, it’s Lars Ekman in Stockholm. I need some help. We’re following up on two Swedish individuals who went through the airport in Tallinn, an SAS flight from Stockholm on Friday evening, June 14th and returning on Sunday afternoon, June 16th.” He rattled off two sets of numbers that gave the birthdates, the towns of their birth, the hospitals they were born in and their genders. These were the numbers given to Spimler and Hoffberg at birth and would be used to register everything about them: bank payments, parking tickets and income tax returns while they lived, and now even used to register the results of the Medical Examiner for Hoffberg.

On the other end the man called Jyrki was making notes and told Ekman he would call back soon. It took less than fifteen minutes. Sara and Sven were still looking at the tapes of Hoffberg when the call came in. Ekman jotted down a few notes, then turned to address the homicide officers.

“OK, this case just went into another phase,” said Ekman. “I’m going to give you some details which will keep you from spending a lot of time on dead ends in your investigation.”

“Can we take notes?” Sara asked.

“Yes, about these things you can take notes, but they are to remain between you and Sven. The rest of the team has to be steered around the problems which will arise for them since they won’t know what you know. Ready?”

Sara nodded, and Ekman began. “We know Spimler and Hoffberg went to the same hotel in Tallinn. They spent two nights there. They were called by a local person from Tallinn. They had lunch at the hotel restaurant on Saturday and were joined by a third person during lunch. The older guy, I guess that would be Hoffberg, paid for all three using his credit card, so you’ll find all that when you look into his financial background. The guy they met is a lowlife criminal who makes his living providing Swedes with all kinds of things: women, drugs, cars – whatever they need, he can get. According to my source in Tallinn, all three were being observed by someone we call Schneller, a person we know about from another source. So far I’m not sure why Schneller was involved, but it indicates something other than just a normal business transaction was taking place. Schneller used to work for the Stasi in Berlin before the wall came down. He speaks perfect Swedish. We also know he worked with a contact somewhere in the Swedish Parliament.”

“Do you know who the contact was?” asked Sara.

“We have a codename, yes,” said Ekman.

“Do we get to know it?” Sara was getting hopeful.

“No,” said Ekman.

“Don’t you want to finish seeing the tapes of Hoffberg?” she asked.

“No,” said Ekman. “We looked at him years ago, while he was still a member of the Defence Committee. I’m aware of his, uh, let’s say psychological profile, if that’s what you wanted me to observe.”

“Yeah,” said Sara. “He seems more like a psychopath than any of the weirdos I usually run into.”

“Yes?” said Ekman, and Sara knew he was pushing her into making a statement she might regret later on.

“I mean, he seemed to fit the profile of a psychopath – not a dangerous psychopath, of course, I mean, not the kind who goes around killing people, but a psychopath just the same,” she said.

“Most politicians are.” Ekman made Sara feel like a little schoolgirl again.

“But the word on the brochure, torpedo, does that mean anything?” asked Sara.

“What do you think?” he asked, looking into her eyes for the first time since he’d entered the room. “Have you found any way to interpret what that word might mean in your investigation?”

Sara felt like apologising for dragging him out into the rain just to inform her that she’d made no contribution at all. Her cheeks went red, and her tongue stumbled between her teeth, looking for an answer. “I’m not sure it relates to the murder at all, but it’s a strange thing to write on a brochure.”

“Are you sure Spimler wrote it?” asked Sven.

That did it. Sara felt devastated, and it seemed she’d been backed into a logical corner where the only way out was to admit complete defeat. “I’m sorry, Sven,” she said, then faced Ekman. “I’m sorry, really. It seemed important at the time, but right now it doesn’t seem to fit.”

“Don’t worry,” said Ekman.

Sven looked over at him, cocked his head to one side and said, “Find Spimler, or Lemko. And Sara, let’s get this case solved. Now. You’ve been at it for more than a week, and so far we’ve got nothing.”

“And don’t forget the background I just gave you.” Ekman put on his raincoat as he spoke. “It might save you some time.”

“Yes, thank you,” said Sara, as both men left. She went to the window and watched them as they left the building and began the walk around the block to the NSS wing.

She watched Ekman shaking his head as Sven kept gesturing. She couldn’t figure out whether the head-shaking concerned her or not, but it bothered her to have to admit to a problem she couldn’t solve on her own. It was obvious the word torpedo hadn’t surprised Ekman, but why the rush to get over to talk to her? He wasn’t even interested in seeing the tapes of Hoffberg.

Well, at least she’d kicked the information about the Russian word upstairs. If it meant anything then Ekman would know what to do about it. And she’d got something in return: the background about the trip to Tallinn, although she wasn’t sure it helped move her investigation further.

The Hoffberg tapes were still in her mind, and she decided to talk to Kristina Hoffberg about the state of her husband’s mind just before he’d been murdered. Hoffberg’s wife must have noticed something. Maybe she could remember some little detail which would get Sara started again. Then there was the question of the telephone number leading to Nowhereland for Magdalena. Sara called Kristina Hoffberg and left a message saying she’d be there tomorrow morning, and then made a hotel reservation in Malmö. After her talk with the widow, Sara would continue down south to Malmö and talk to the policeman who seemed to have so much trouble finding Lemko.

She knew Ekman’s interest in Hoffberg’s cleaning woman was somehow connected to a trip to Estonia. Even though the word torpedo had seemed to inject Ekman with a double dose of adrenaline, she still couldn’t fit her murder case into a box with all those dimensions, leaving her with only a thin lead to Trelleborg and a hope Lemko would be the thread connecting all the divergent parts of her puzzle.

She also knew if her work started to involve the higher spheres of international politics, she ran the risk of being left in the dark, with the NSS leading her and her team by the nose until they closed the case at a time when it served the purposes of the current power structure, and Sweden’s Prime Minister.

*

Lars Ekman stared at the cover of the latest report about the search for a nuclear warhead in the centre of Stockholm, which was lying on the surface of his desk. He was the only officer remaining in the building, and had already exchanged pleasantries with the night watchman during his rounds. He had read the report three times. There were sections concerning each phase of the search Ekman had initiated – none were approved by his superiors, and none of it financed by the current budget.

First, there was the helicopter scan of the city, done at night to avoid public curiosity, and using the latest radiation sensors attached to the underside. The pilot had flown a grid encompassing the entire centre of Stockholm, first from north to south in swaths only thirty feet wide, then repeating the operation in swaths from east to west.

There was a surprising amount of illicit radioactive material that showed up during the scans. Ekman had been awakened four times during the week the helicopter search had taken place. Each time his heart raced as he awaited the news from the patrol car sent to the site, and each time his hopes had been dashed. The searches yielded only radioactive isotopes stolen from hospitals, as well as a box of discarded smoke detectors and two metal chairs thrown in a dumpster, later found to have been manufactured in China using discarded radioactive steel.

The section concerning the search of church steeples was just as gloomy. The NSS field agent assigned to the task had complained about the need to ascend and descend the tight, circular stone staircases inside the church steeples, and had demanded extra danger pay after stumbling on his first descent. There was an abundance of bizarre items found at the tops of the steeples: lunchboxes filled with the mouldy contents of lunches forgotten several years ago, wine bottles still waiting to be uncorked, several lewd magazines and large numbers of bats that seemed unwilling to share their space with the unfortunate officer tasked with the climbs. Nowhere had he found anything resembling the conical metal object he sought.

The search for cars still parked in the centre of the city since two days before Hoffberg’s death was also a dead end. The Parking Authority of Stockholm had a complete database of the six hundred cars disobeying the rigid parking laws of the inner city, and each car had been sought out and searched. Although the dead body of an Iraqi illegal immigrant had been found in the trunk of one of the cars, nothing looked anything like the photograph of the green cone, about three feet long.

Ekman rubbed his eyes again and leaned back in his chair. There seemed to be little hope of finding it. For an instant he tried to hope that Hoffberg had only been bluffing, that his threat had been a ruse, or that he had been unable to use the Shkval, which had almost certainly been in his possession. The hope failed. The photograph of the empty box found at the bottom of the Baltic, only a mile from the wreck of the MS Sally, told him Hoffberg’s threat was real. Hoffberg must have had access to the torpedo. It had to be somewhere in the city. If his threat was to be believed, it had to be armed.

Ekman’s private cell phone vibrated in his shirt pocket. He hoped it was a call from his girl friend, Rachel, but a quick glance at the display told him to shake off his exhaustion in a hurry. Spooked Rice, it read. It was CIA Station Chief Rice.

“Ekman,” he said.

“I know it’s late, but I couldn’t sleep, and I assumed you were in the same state. We saw the news about Hoffberg, and we know about the manual he bought in Estonia. He must have hidden our hardware. I want it back,” said Rice.

Ekman held his cell phone in front of him, shaking his head in disbelief.

“What makes you think we have it?” he asked.

“I know you’re looking for it,” replied Rice, “I tried to hire some special equipment from the University in Uppsala, and they said the police were using it. Funny we should both be needing the same equipment.”

“Pure coincidence,” snorted Ekman.

“Sure,” said Rice, “And the moon is made of green cheese. I’ve got men with scintillators combing the streets of Stockholm, looking for the same coincidence.”

“You know I can’t tell you anything,” said Ekman.

“Same here.”

“So if you were to find anything, by coincidence, would you tell me?” asked Ekman.

“You show me yours, I’ll show you mine,” said Rice.

“Agreed. Now let me get back to sleep.”

“We’re not sleeping until we find it,” came the answer, then a click as the call ended.

Ekman cradled his head in his arms as he fell asleep at his desk for the third night in a row, trying to imagine a new way to locate the weapon. Just before sleep swept away his awareness, he made a note to begin a search of the harbours on either side of the Old City the next day. Hoffberg had taken a torpedo. Maybe he’d just dumped it in the water somewhere.

Part 2

Chapter 11

The Prime Minister had moved the practical affairs of running the country to the office at his country home, bowing to complaints from his political secretary and Deputy Foreign Minister Niklas Shoreman, who both seemed to think Hoffberg’s threat shouldn’t be taken too lightly.

All three men sat in the PM’s private office, discussing how Hoffberg’s death could be used for their own political purposes. The Prime Minister was certain they could use it to sow disharmony among Environmentalist Party members, and perhaps get a number of new voters in this way. His political secretary agreed, but pointed out that such an attempt carried risks and could end up costing their party votes instead.

Deputy Foreign Minister Niklas Shoreman, usually a provider of brilliant political analysis, sat on the sofa, preoccupied with thoughts he didn’t share. A few of Shoreman’s contacts were ex-Stasi agents, now employed by the Russians. They’d informed him about the sudden interest in the nuclear-tipped torpedo, the Rocketfish, and that one of the shadowy figures involved in illegal arms smuggling had even been asked to provide details of the whereabouts of an ex-Stasi agent, codenamed Schneller.

Shoreman hadn’t told the agent who’d contacted him about Hoffberg’s threat, but he understood with total clarity what it meant. Living close to an armed nuclear weapon was not a choice he found acceptable. He felt certain Schneller was the killer in the Hoffberg case. He also knew it would be exceedingly hard to find him.

“Niklas,” said the Prime Minister, “We need your input on this. Your thoughts. Say something useful.”

“I was thinking about Hoffberg’s threat,” said Shoreman.

“Hoffberg is dead,” said the PM. “His threat died with him. Now how can we use it?”

Niklas Shoreman sat without speaking, still lost in his train of thought, when the PM interrupted again.

“Niklas? Ah, now I get it. You mean we should be thinking about whether or not we should make Hoffberg’s threat public, and use that. Excellent.”

“Well, not exactly,” said Shoreman.

“I see,” said the PM, “I see. We make it public and let the media paint him as a terrorist, which he actually was, more or less, then we say we got him before he could do anything, unfortunately being forced to kill him in the process. Case closed, zip-zap, another positive deed for us. Almost as good as using the long-time unemployed to clean up the oil spill on the west coast two summers ago. We reduced unemployment by nearly one per cent during that crucial month, and it didn’t cost us anything.” The PM sat back in his oversized easy chair, clearly pleased with his contribution.

“Actually, I don’t think we could do that,” said the political secretary, pouring himself another ample serving of the thirty-seven-year-old single malt Islay Scotch whisky. “The police have already been interviewed on television about the killing. If we come out and say the police did it during some kind of raid it might appear we haven’t been informed, or even worse, that we’re way ahead of the police.”

“I’m not so sure the public actually remembers all that much,” said the PM, shifting his weight so he was leaning towards the political secretary, almost threatening him as he spoke. “What we need here is to use this situation to our best advantage. The police will always look like incompetent nincompoops in the media.”

Niklas Shoreman looked up from the hidden world of the debate which had been raging in his mind, finally ready to provide the advice which would carry the day. Shoreman was used to this: being able to sit in the background as others made their own weaknesses apparent, then using a single sentence to push his agenda to the foreground.

“We’ll have to announce Hoffberg’s threat, that much is clear. Otherwise it will appear we’ve misled those entrusted with safeguarding those living in Stockholm. Everyone seems to agree on that. What we have to find is a way to make his death an advantage to us, and at the same time make us look like superheroes.”

“Superheroes?” asked the PM and his political secretary at the same time.

“Yes, exactly,” said Shoreman. “We have to appear as superheroes.”

“Of course,” said the Prime Minister, “Superheroes! It’s so simple. The bigger the disaster we save the nation from, the better we are.”

“Yes, Prime Minister,” said Shoreman. “I agree with you entirely. So maybe we can concentrate on finding out if Hoffberg’s threat was real, and if it was, disarm it.”

“Do you think he’d be such a bastard as to actually have a device capable of carrying out his threat?” asked the PM. The furrows on his brow indicated he was considering this worrisome possibility for the first time.

Shoreman poured himself another whisky. “If he didn’t have one then there’s nothing to worry about, we’ll just pretend we found it and have taken care of it. If he did have one, then we simply have to find it before it finds us. Otherwise Stockholm, and everyone who lives there, could be annihilated.”

“So you think the threat is real?” The PM was now clearly worried.

“I think the NSS and the NBI have to get their act together on this right now,” said Shoreman, “and you have to make them see the dangers of not solving the real crime: the attempted murder of thousands of Stockholm citizens.”

*

Sara drove out to Stallarholmen on Saturday morning. She remembered her journey a week ago. This time the road was almost empty of traffic, and the storm had washed the surface to a clear black line against the frosty autumn colours of the trees lining the highway. God out with his paintbrush again, doing up the trees in yellow, red and green.

She parked in the driveway and Kristina Hoffberg opened the door before she’d even left the car. Kristina had something to tell her, and the preliminaries of tea and biscuits disappeared as she motioned for Sara to sit down at the kitchen table. Sara noticed Forensics had returned the kitchen chair Leo Hoffberg had been tied to, and hesitated before she sat down in it.

Kristina pushed over a pile of bank statements. “This came in the post yesterday.” She was clearly irritated, and pointed to a line on Leo Hoffberg’s bank statement for the last three months. “It looks like my husband was robbed when he was in Tallinn during the summer,” said Kristina, pointing to a line that included a single bank transfer of 50,000 euros translated to Swedish kronor, an amount that left the account nearly empty.

“Is there anything your husband could have bought for this amount? A luxury car? It’s close to half a million kronor,” asked Sara.

“No,” said Kristina. “We’d been saving this money for improvements to the house. He must have been robbed.”

Sara looked at the statement again; saw the hotel bill for Hoffberg and Spimler that Ekman had spoken of. She could see from the date that 50,000 euros had left the account the day before Leo had paid his hotel bill. There were a few other small amounts for meals and some cash at an ATM, making it look like an ordinary trip to a European capital, except for the cash withdrawal of fifty grand.

“Mrs Hoffberg, this may not be the best time to ask, but I’d like to talk to you about your husband’s health up until, uh, the time he died.”

“Health? What do you mean? He was as healthy as a horse – always ate well, barely drank unless it was the weekend, and even then only if the wine was from organic vineyards. I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Well, I was looking at some of the tapes of your husband’s television appearances. He seemed to be under some stress or strain recently. I was wondering if you’d noticed that too.”

Kristina Hoffberg swallowed once, then again. Her eyes had been fixed on Sara as she’d spoken of Leo’s health, but they suddenly wandered to view the wall of green cypress trees separating their lawn from the channel.

“Do you have a garden?” asked Kristina.

“No,” said Sara, “I live in a flat. Was Leo under stress recently?” She wouldn’t let Kristina run the show.

“We lost almost every rose bush we had this year. The deer ate them all up. Our poor roses never get a chance to bloom. I asked Leo to call the game warden to have them shot, but he wouldn’t. A friend of nature, you know. He’d have hand-fed them with rosebuds if they’d have let him come that close. There was a time during the spring – about May, I can’t be too sure – but from then on he seemed to become a recluse. Hard to reach. Before that he’d watch the news on TV and go on and on about how the government was making the same old mistakes, that he’d told them so. You know, the usual complaining. After May he just wouldn’t listen anymore, he seemed to have lost interest. No, I wouldn’t say stress or strain, actually. Just different: introverted, colder than usual.”

“Did he ever mention another person? Someone who might have been pressuring him in any way?”

“No, never. The only close contact he had was with that man across the channel, Spimler. From the looks of the bank statement Leo paid for his trip to Tallinn. He didn’t even tell me it was Tallinn. He told me he was going to speak at a conference on world peace in the south and had to be away a couple of days. It wasn’t unusual, he was always going away on conferences,” she said, “but it wasn’t usual for him to lie about where. Do you think maybe Leo and Spimler were like, you know, friends?”

“We’re still trying to find Mr Spimler so we can ask him a few questions. I’ll include that question if you like.” Then she threw a final question at Mrs Hoffberg. “And then there’s this telephone number you gave me, the one for your cleaning lady, Magdalena. We’ve tried to reach her using that, but it doesn’t seem to go anywhere. Could you look into your records for the right number?”

“Of course.” Kristina Hoffberg rose to fetch a small black book, paging through it until she reached a page in the middle. “Silly me,” she said, “I must have reversed the last two numbers. Here, look for yourself.”

Sara wrote down the new number, then pulled out her cell phone. Kristina Hoffberg watched her punch in the number and both women waited for someone to answer. There was no answer, and Sara thought she saw the widow Hoffberg crack a slight smile as she thanked her.

*

Sara got into her car. She hesitated at the crossroad which would take her out to the freeway, and then turned her car towards Sela Island and the Spimler home.

Mrs Spimler answered the door and let Sara in. “I was just sitting here,” she said, motioning to a vacant space on the floor among a circle of binders, suspension files and boxes of photographs. “I have to figure out what happened to him.”

Sara sat beside the anxious wife. “I’m still trying to find him. You mentioned something about a brochure. Do you have it?”

“No, I sent it to you as you asked me to. It was in this box, with the rest of the material for the Fish Project.”

“Sorry, the what project?”

“The Fish Project. I found a whole box of material in Martin’s closet about some kind of fish project. Would you like to see it?”

“Yes, please.” Sara tried to hide her excitement as Kristina stood to get the box. “It might give us some indication about where to locate your husband.”

Mrs Spimler handed over the orange-coloured cardboard storage box to Sara. “I didn’t look at all of it. It seemed to have something to do with something out in the Baltic. It didn’t seem to be important, so I just put it aside.”

Sara’s pulse quickened as she looked at the first few pages in the box. There was the map of the Baltic, bare except for a single dot. She’d seen that page before, and recognised it immediately. She put the lid back on the box and said she’d return it as soon as they’d finished using it in the investigation.

As the sun began to set she started the long drive to southern Sweden for her meeting with the Malmö County Police the following day. Only a few miles from the Spimler house, Sara couldn’t keep her curiosity in check and stopped at a roadside café to open the box again.

Under the map and several reports about pesticides in the water near Stockholm which had been written by Spimler, she found a large white envelope. Inside it was an orange manual with some lettering in Cyrillic. Sara couldn’t make out much of it, but as she leafed through it she could see there were several pictures of what looked to be some kind of rocket. Pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place. She now knew Hoffberg and Spimler had been involved in something very violent.

Sara thought of Ekman’s tip about the man called Schneller, and she wondered if he knew about the Fish Project. It was something she’d have to take up with Ekman when she got back. She sent him a brief text message saying that he should call her as soon as possible, and then added the words, found rocket manual to get his attention.

*

The VA-111 Shkval was technology born of Soviet scientists, an invention which was simple and elegant, mothered by a lack of resources and the need to create something out of nothing. Instead of being able to amaze the press with achievements which would win a Nobel Prize in any of the available scientific areas, this was technology so simple a schoolchild could have produced it. But no American of any age ever did, and America was furious, and still jealous. And extremely curious.

What they’d done was to answer a simple question: “What slows the speed of a vessel in the water?” The obvious answer was “The water”, and most scientists had let it go at that. “But suppose it were possible to make something move in the water without coming into contact with the water?” the Russian geniuses had asked. “Suppose we create an air bubble around the vessel so that it doesn’t touch the water? If the bubble were extended in front of the vessel at all times then it wouldn’t come into contact with water. It would be as if the vessel were flying, but under water. All we have to do is figure out a way to make the bubble.”

As soon as satellite images had disclosed underwater speeds in excess of 250 miles an hour, the entire intelligence forces of the Western world became turbo-charged in efforts to try to get their hands on a working model. It proved to be impossible. On at least two occasions, attempts to surreptitiously purchase the technology from sources in Moscow resulted in the imprisonment of agents for at least twenty years. Even though they knew how to do it in theory, the Americans had still never achieved the practical result which threatened the future of McDonald’s hamburger stands and Texaco gas stations worldwide. This had become serious business for the intelligence community, but they were, as usual, confined to the budgetary constraints common to democratic rule.

It was the framework of a free market combined with a persistent Estonian challenge to Russian occupation which finally won out, and it was the one million US dollars paid into the Swiss bank account of an Estonian trader in war materials that made the sale.

The buyer and the seller had been careful to hide the details of what they were doing. Both would have been surprised to discover the number of people witnessing the transaction which took place, especially the agent from MI6. Captain John Peters and his elite team of US Army Criminal Investigative Officers had been watching as the deal went down.

They huddled in a car parked outside the Portus Hotel next to the Ferry Harbour in Tallinn, Estonia, with a small plastic dish aimed at a window of the Retro Restaurant. Inside, three men sat at a booth. They spoke in low voices as they discussed the details of the sale. With a final handshake followed by a transfer of funds from an account in Switzerland, the deal was done. When a call came to the cell phone of the seller, informing him that the money had been transferred to his account, he’d waved a signal to a man wearing a black leather jacket, sitting at the booth across from them.

The man in the jacket left the restaurant, walking quickly to the corner of the building, and stood in front of the pharmacy to oversee the loading of the weapon on board the MS Sally. It had been hidden in a freight truck, behind tons of bags of cement bound for Stockholm, and he watched as it was driven onto the RORO deck of the ferry.

This was a delivery that was never to take place, and a shipment which would cost the lives of hundreds of people. It was also a shipment that would determine the future of governments around the Baltic Sea.

Captain Peters had sent a message to the Pentagon that the sale had been concluded, and that the Western world had another serious threat to contend with. In the hands of a foreign army, the weapon was, of course, an uncomfortable addition to the dangers that soldiers and sailors had to deal with in wartime. There were even those that were convinced that at least the United States military forces would be able to provide a strategic answer, that there were developments which would make the weapon worthless to use. However, in the hands of a terrorist intent on creating havoc, and with a limited goal, the weapon became something else. It would provide a public demonstration of what a terrorist group was capable of, and it would be a message that few would be able to escape.

If the torpedo were headed for the Middle East, the centre of gravity of power would almost certainly shift. Captain Peters reviewed his options. The simplest option was to make sure that Swedish Customs were informed, so they could stop the truck, search it and impound the illegal cargo. With any luck, they could even convince the Swedish government it was expedient to sell the missile to a US company with interests in underwater technology. Months of surveillance would have had finally paid off, and Peters was certain that he could very soon celebrate the end of a successful surveillance operation.

Before he allowed himself to get carried away with premature exuberance, Peters considered another option. They had to assume others knew of this shipment, people who might be interested in making sure the torpedo ended up on the bottom of the sea where it could easily be retrieved. This was a drastic step, but the unpredictable whims of the Swedish government were well documented and there was no guarantee that knowledge of the cargo meant that it would end up in the right hands. Peters also knew they might very well have to witness the destruction of the torpedo, just to appease those within Parliament who were making it more and more difficult to conduct business within the Defence Department.

Peters knew there was too little time to use the standard channels to solve the problem. Golf-course diplomacy always took several months to put into place, and it took months to ensure that ad hoc agreements arrived at between the fifteenth and sixteenth holes would actually be put into effect.

He would have to act without the support of his superior officers. He began to worry that saving the Western world might come at the price of his own career. He thought of his predecessor, Lieutenant John Hurtree, who had never flinched when faced with such a choice. Hurtree had never made it beyond second lieutenant during his entire career, in spite of being able to crack amazing cases. He always used the grey area between military protocol and common sense to find a way to solve his cases, even though they often bordered on what was judicially correct. Hurtree had always maintained he was only close to making an error, and his proof was that he’d never been prosecuted for any of his questionable tactics. He also said it made it easier for him to sleep at night.

Peters reflected on his own career and decided he needed to work both options, so he had booked a ticket on the MS Sally for one of his field agents. He’d be providing them with real-time information, giving Peters the ace in the hole he needed if he couldn’t get the Swedish government to comply. He’d have to rely on being able to use the CID motto: Do what has to be done.

Captain Peters was unaware it was his own government making the purchase. The deep cover necessary to complete the sale demanded no one on the British MI6 team assigned to contact the Russian soldiers who had stolen the torpedo could reveal their operation to anyone outside their tight little circle. When MI6 had signalled to the CIA that they were only one ferry journey away from being the proud owners of one VA-111, they celebrated their success where two other attempts had failed. The United States would finally be in possession of the weapon most feared by navies throughout the world: a Rocketfish.

At about the same time, in an office in St. Petersburg, an agent of the FSB, the Russian Security Police, was alerted to the fact that the Shkval torpedo was now on its way to Stockholm on board the MS Sally. Russian FSB surveillance technology was somewhat less sophisticated than what the CID used, but it was just as effective. Instead of listening in on the conversation at the restaurant using a super-sensitive microphone aimed at the window next to the diners, the FSB listened using their waiter. “Old-Tech,” they called him, when they compared notes with their colleagues. “He’s old, but he still works pretty well.”

Russia had finally been given a chance to retrieve the torpedo which had been stolen from their warehouse at the submarine base in Paldiski, about thirty miles from the capital of Tallinn, only days before they had evacuated Estonia. It was an opportunity they would not miss. They knew there was little hope they could convince Swedish Customs to turn it over if it were ever impounded. The Swedes might even sell it to the Americans, or destroy it out of spite. They had only one option, and an urgent request was sent to Moscow to use it.

This was part of the background which lay inside the folders on Ekman’s desk, and he swore when his cell phone registered Sara’s message about her finding the manual. She was beginning to find out too much. The risk she would introduce long-secret information into the publicity of criminal case files was now a real danger. He punched in a reply message, telling her he expected her to come to his office on Sunday morning before nine, and began the work of moving the Hoffberg case from the National Bureau of Investigation over to the NSS. The underwater search of the harbour on the Baltic side of the Old City would begin early tomorrow.

Chapter 12

Sara arrived in Malmö late at night, checked in at the hotel and went to a room with paint peeling off the walls and a bathroom she had to share with three others in the corridor. The list of approved hotels was a joke at work. The detectives who travelled a lot knew how to check into an unapproved hotel and still send the bill to the taxpayers.

Sara stood in various yoga positions, trying to reduce the tension in her body and the agitation in her mind without success, not even when she tried standing and holding two oranges over her head like the Buddha statue she had at home.

She didn’t know when she fell asleep, but she woke up as tired as when she’d arrived. There was no breakfast room, so she went out for a bread roll and a cup of tea around the corner.

As she jogged back to the hotel she called her contact at Malmö County Police and set up a meeting before their first coffee break. It was a day off for him, a rest from the immigrant crimes that plagued his district, and he wasn’t happy about having to meet with her. They’d depart from his office to Lemko’s house outside Trelleborg, a half-hour’s drive away.

*

Lemko lived in a simple farmhouse, painted rusty red with a white trim, surrounded by furrowed, muddied fields which would be flowering in bright yellow when summer came. About fifty yards behind the house there was a patch of forest continuing up the hill, mostly birch with leafless, white trunks against the dark floor of mouldy leaves. Houses like this made up at least half of the buildings in rural Sweden, so common you had to remind yourself to notice them.

Sara’s contact followed the wet gravel road and he drove up to the mailbox, carefully avoiding the open patch of mud in front of it. He opened the window to point out the lack of tyre tracks, then continued towards the house.

They both got out of the car and he knocked at the door several times. Sara looked through one of the windows and saw only her reflection in the double-paned glass, and she jumped backwards, startled, frightened by the reflection of her own face staring back at her.

She banged on the door and waited for some kind of sound indicating someone was trying to hide on the other side, but there was nothing – just silence and her own breathing, and off in the distance the sound of some magpies squawking at the clouds that cluttered up the sky.

“If your suspect came here as you wrote in your email, then he must have managed to leave before we could get out here. We’ve looked for the vehicle you put in your BOLO request, but we haven’t seen anything in spite of watching every road out of here, every single ferry to the continent, including the bridge over to Denmark. I’m sorry, but I don’t think he’s here.”

“We’re not so sure it’s a he. There seems to be at least some indication that Kim Lemko could be a woman. Did you do a stakeout?” asked Sara. She nodded towards a power pole near the house. “I’d at least have tried to look at the power consumption on the electric meter over there to see if there were any variations.”

“We’re not all that sophisticated down here,” he said, putting the car in gear for the drive back to his office. “I don’t think he’s here. End of story.”

“This is where he’s supposed to live. Where else could he have gone?”

“It would have been no problem for him to take the ferry to the continent on the night he drove down here. We tried checking the cameras run by the Customs Bureau at the loading ramp but they were down that week for maintenance. Look somewhere else.”

They rode the entire distance back to his office in silence after that. Sara knew it would make it more difficult to get their support later on if she drove them into a corner. The genie in her Buddhist bottle was telling her Lemko was still here, watching them and laughing at their attempts to find her. Or was it a him? Sara knew she’d need more convincing evidence to prove that this was the location in order to get the guys in Malmö to react again.

The Shkval manual Spimler’s wife had given her told Sara to look harder for her husband, but they hadn’t found the slightest trace of his whereabouts after his boat had been found drifting near the House of Parliament on the day of the Hoffberg killing.

The manual indicated Hoffberg and Spimler were involved with some kind of rocket-like weapon.

This has to be the torpedo mentioned on Spimler’s brochure.

The map which pointed out a spot near where the MS Sally sank reminded Sara that Ekman would be increasing his involvement as soon as she got back.

She went over the motives they had for Hoffberg’s murder, and was beginning to feel they’d have to add another possibility. Sara didn’t know how, but it seemed the torpedo could be tied to the Hoffberg murder and Spimler’s disappearance, but the whole thing seemed too bizarre to explain to anyone.

It was a feeling, not a result of the method Sven always wanted her to use. She’d have to be careful not to spend too much time talking about this until she was more certain about what it meant. At the same time she knew letting Ekman know about the manual would cause him to grab the Secret stamp he kept on his desk, but there’d be plenty of time for that when she went in on Sunday.

*

The officer from Malmö County Police dropped her off next to her car, inviting her in for coffee and a chance to meet the weekend staff.

“No thanks,” said Sara. “I have a long drive ahead of me. We’ll be in contact again soon. Thanks for all your wonderful help.”

A few minutes after that she was on the road to Stockholm, and put herself on autopilot. It was a six-hour drive back to Stockholm, and as the afternoon wore on and the miles added up, she dredged through the case again and again. Soon her thoughts began to wander from the case to more personal subjects.

Sara had decided to try to mend her poor relationship with her family before Christmas. Her one-bedroom flat wasn’t big enough to let anyone stay over, but she had the use of a large room downstairs, a great place to host parties. She’d already booked it for Christmas, and she’d try to get what was left of her shattered family there for a turkey dinner. Her grandmother had a fantastic recipe and she was sure she’d help her fix it. Sara was in the middle of her shopping list when her cell phone rang: a number she’d never seen before.

It was a social assistant at Grandma’s nursing home, who told her that her grandmother had fallen seriously ill and they wanted her to come to the hospital as soon as she could. Then her cell phone battery died. She pressed her little Peugeot even harder and whatever remained of the case flew from her mind.

Sara had lived most of her childhood with her grandmother, a woman who’d filled her head with all kinds of trash when she was young. One day when Sara was about four years old they were standing on a platform waiting for a local train, and out of nowhere, a high-speed commuter train thundered by. The wind buffeted both of them, and Sara clutched onto her grandmother’s thick, woollen overcoat as she tried to maintain her balance. When the train had passed her grandmother told her that trains were borne on the wind, and the faster the wind, the more train it could carry. It was a ridiculous thing to tell a child, and for many years Sara caught herself looking around for a loose train whenever there was an unexpected gust of wind. Even though she could laugh about it to herself, she sometimes wondered what other crap was still lying about in her unconscious memory, cluttering up the way she saw the world.

Like the time Sara’s grandmother told her that some pigeons chose partners for life, and when they did they got a special ring they carried on one of their legs. Sara could still remember the first time she saw a dead pigeon with a ring, and how she had cried about it several times during the next few days; the thought of that poor pigeon’s loved one searching for its life-mate wrenching her heart.

She still loved her grandmother, and even though she could spend hours telling her off in her mind, castigating her for the stupid parts of her upbringing, Sara still wouldn’t have had it any other way. Her Grandma loved her, and it made up for everything. Sara wished her own parents had done the same.

Still, in spite of it, or maybe because of it, the way she’d grown up had given her some insight into the way crooks thought. When she spoke to others at the police station she was struck by the differences in the way they were brought up. Most of them had had very normal lives at home; many of them coming from traditional families: mummy, daddy and kids, number one and two. Few came from rich families, but very, very few from parents who were destitute, and almost no one else had been raised by a grandparent like she had been.

Her broken family brought her closer to understanding the crooks, but her grandmother’s bizarre explanations of her parents behaviour had prepared her for her work better than any course she’d ever been on. She had grown up surrounded by lies. The news of the sudden illness dismayed Sara, and she started calculating when she could make it to the hospital to talk to the nurses.

The sun set as she sped up the E4 highway, and she turned on the radio to listen to the news. Very little was happening, as usual. Some Opposition politicians were reacting to the Prime Minister’s decision to give Parliament a week’s holiday so that some extraordinary rodent extermination could be carried out in the building. Business as usual.

*

The first thing Sara did when she got home on Saturday night was to call the hospital. They told her it’d be OK if she showed up during evening visiting hours on the following day, so she made a pot of tea and passed out on her bed before it had time to steep.

She woke up at six in the morning, microwaved the pot of cold tea still on the counter from the night before and prepared her notes for the meeting with Ekman as she watched the sky become lighter; the sun rising somewhere beyond the view that her one kitchen window allowed.

*

Ekman told her he had a briefing to do with his boss at ten o’clock. “This has to be a brief meeting. Is Sven coming?”

“No, I’ve sent Sven a copy of the report you’re about to get now. I’ll keep it short.”

Ekman sat in front of her in the conference room, a single yellow notepad in front of him, tapping his pen impatiently. “So what’s your news?” he asked. “I haven’t got much time.”

Sara referred to her notes and showed Ekman the box with the manual she’d brought back with her, and flipped open the manual to the page containing the drawing.

“Looks like some kind of rocket might be involved,” she said. “Unless it’s the ‘torpedo’ on this brochure.” She pushed the fax Spimler’s wife had sent across the table.

She explained what they’d found about the Volvo 242 and its driver, and that her attempts to identify Lemko as a he or a she hadn’t been successful, but that she at least knew where to look. Sara even told Ekman about Malmö’s assumption that Lemko had already escaped. She took up the 50,000 euro payment on Hoffberg’s bank statement, and at that point Ekman looked up sharply. He hadn’t been taking notes as she spoke, and Sara wondered if he’d be able to remember it all later.

When she told him that Hoffberg’s wife thought he’d been robbed, Ekman took up his pen, then let it drop onto the notepad. He looked at her, his voice now very calm, matter-of-fact, a weatherman explaining that it rained last night, and so what?

“You have to find Spimler,” he said.

“Yes, I agree, but how?” Sara asked.

“That’s your job.” Ekman looked down at his notepad, then looked up again. “And I can’t help you do that. I’d like you to keep the information about the manual from the team for the time being. I doubt it will help them find Spimler, and until I get clearance I want the box held here. OK? Has Mr Hurtree contacted you yet?”

“No. Not beyond that postcard telling me he was going to visit, but I’ve been on the road a lot. Why?”

“He probably will soon.” Ekman gathered up his notepad and opened the conference room door for her. “Keep in touch.”

“Before Tuesday your team will be off this case,” he muttered to himself as he saw her leave.

He returned to the requisition form used to book one of the patrol boats assigned to Stockholm Harbour, signed it and hoped his boss would approve it without question. He had already overstepped the normal way of doing things when he’d asked some friends working the police helicopters assigned to traffic to work all night last week, carrying the radiation sensors he’d borrowed from Uppsala University. He had to find something soon, or even success would be frosted with an icing of defeat.

*

On the way back to her office Sara stopped for a tea at the café separated by a glass wall from the swimming pool, a place everyone called the Aquarium. This place wasn’t popular with the uniformed cops who seemed to prefer to have their coffee outside, so the café was usually empty except for investigators who liked to sit and watch the swimmers on the other side. Sara was alone, and it gave her a chance to sit in peace for a few minutes as she tried to adjust her thinking to what she’d just learned.

She gazed at her reflection in the glass window, noticed two tiny wrinkles on her face, and bent closer. She leaned back, concentrating on the reflection of her thirty-six-year-old image with a deep sigh. Sara still remembered the excitement and confusion of being eighteen. Then she added another eighteen years to her current age, blinked her blue eyes and saw a fifty-four-year-old woman staring back at her from the window. Doubling her age meant she was already halfway to seventy-two, and she began to wonder if the glass was some kind of crystal ball.

Her thoughts returned to her meeting with Ekman. He seemed to know everything she’d just told him, including the astonishing news of the torpedo and its connection to Hoffberg. She began to wonder if maybe he also knew who’d murdered Hoffberg, and if that could be the reason why he kept pushing her to find Spimler.

Outside the café there was a steady stream of police cars navigating the streets near the County Court House, a sign that a sensitive case would be going to trial the next day. It made her wonder why it took so many uniformed police to keep trials secure, and it didn’t seem like a good sign at all. Sara had seen key witnesses to her own cases suddenly change their testimony, suffering the consequences of perjury to avoid an alternative that was apparently far worse.

Her father’s comment when he’d found out she’d been accepted to the police academy popped up in her mind: “You’ll soon find out what it’s like to march up the mountain with Sisyphus.” Sara hadn’t looked up the Grecian myth until she’d graduated from the academy. Maybe they were in an absurd rat-race, destined to repeat themselves forever, and could only be happy when they prepared for their next impossible case.

Sara had never been able to figure out her father, who had ended his academic career as a flip-flop heroin addict, and who’d concealed his habit from everyone except his family, somehow managing to keep it under control well enough to do his menial office job during the week while blasting his mind out during the weekend.

As she woke up from this daydream Sara caught herself looking at two well-proportioned police officers diving off the springboard, and she had the feeling they’d seen her watching them. She took her tray to the trolley and left, hoping they hadn’t recognised her.

*

When Sara got back to the Hoffberg room the whole team was there, and she felt like the teacher who had just arrived too late for class.

“Hello, everybody,” she said, trying to sound irritated. “Has anyone found Spimler yet?”

“We’ve been waiting for you.” Sven wasn’t happy.

“I was over speaking to Ekman,” said Sara. “He said to tell you hello.”

“Have there been any new developments there?” Sven asked.

“Not very much that seems to pertain to the Hoffberg case.” And she continued with the news that came from Hoffberg’s widow about the large payment from his account, and Kristina’s assumption that he’d been robbed while in Tallinn.

Sara watched for a reaction from Sven as she told them about the trip to Malmö and Lemko’s disappearance, but he seemed preoccupied with something else, so when she finished she asked if anyone else had any news.

“The only real news I’ve got is that the company Spimler worked for has just filed for bankruptcy,” said Dan. “Maybe Spimler was out after money. Maybe the fifty grand from Hoffberg went into Spimler’s account somewhere.”

Sara pulled the bank statement from the case file and gave it to him. “Here,” she said, “check it out now.”

“But it’s Sunday,” he said.

“You’ll find a way,” said Sara, who then looked over at Robert standing next to the whiteboard, waiting for something to add. “Talk to the people in Forensics. Spimler’s boat was found adrift, and I want to know where it drifted from.”

After the team left to continue on their own, Sven and Sara were left alone in the Hoffberg room and he said, after closing the door after them, “I’m not too happy with your performance on this case. There’s a lot of pressure to get this solved soon, or at least be able to explain why we can’t.”

“Well, I’m not so happy with the straitjacket I have to wear. You and Ekman seem to know things that I don’t about this case and I have to fumble around in the dark, discovering important leads by accident. And when I do find something I can’t even tell the team about it, even though it might help them figure out what’s going on.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, and Sara told him about the box with the manual in it.

“Shit. So it’s out in the open now.”

“And that’s your reaction? Shit, I managed to find out something? Is that why you’re not pleased with my performance?” Sara felt like she probably should have swallowed those last words, but they hopped out of her mouth like ugly toads.

“This is about a little more than just a murder,” said Sven. His voice told Sara that it involved events that were need-to-know; and that as far as he was concerned, she didn’t need to know. “Keep the news about the manual under your hat for the time being.”

“That’s what Ekman said,” Sara told him as she left the room.

*

The phone was ringing when Sara got back to her office, and her mouth was dry, making it hard to answer.

“Sara? Dan here. I managed to get some speed out of our friends at Economic Crimes and they’ve helped me find the bank payment made from Hoffberg’s account. The money went into a Swiss bank account in Lenzburg, just outside of Zurich.”

“Swiss bank account. We’ll see hell freezing before they let us know the owner of that account,” said Sara.

“You’re right, but at least we’ve got one more piece of the puzzle to work with,” said Dan.

“Put it on the whiteboard,” said Sara, and from nowhere a line from one of the seminars that she’d been to last year flashed in front of her eyes. “And ask Economic Crimes if maybe Hoffberg had some kind of document in order to be able to make the money transfer. Anything: a reference number, a contact name, whatever. Such a large sum of money wouldn’t be that easy to get out of the EU without some kind of reference. He must have been paying for something and I want you guys to find out what it was. No bank would have been allowed to carry out such a large transaction without requiring some kind of documentation. Dan, follow this up as soon as the banks open up tomorrow. We’ve been at this for nine days now. We’ve got to have a breakthrough.”

Chapter 13

The head of the NSS, Ekman’s boss, had been briefed by Ekman just after Sara left his office. On the following day he’d been flown down in a military jet to meet with the Prime Minister at the villa in France.

The PM had come to enjoy the NSS briefings, with their detailed accounts of the lives of leading business leaders stepping out of line with unsavoury elements, both foreign and domestic. He’d been surprised to learn how often foreign ambassadors had used diplomatic mail pouches to transport drugs and weapons into the country – barely legal, but so very difficult to stop. He’d been told any attempts to end this traffic would result in immediate reprisals to his own ambassadors and Foreign Service personnel, and such a result might be more embarrassing than it would be worth.

The Prime Minister always noted anything which could be used later on in a special binder known as the gaffing book. People whose names and deeds got them into the binder could be pulled into the PM’s boat whenever he wished, could be forced to do whatever he felt needed to be done. So it was with great anticipation that the PM sat with a yellow ruled notepad and an eager grin on his face as the head of the NSS sat down on the other side of the desk.

“Any good bits of gossip this week?” asked the PM.

“Sorry, Prime Minister, we have a major problem today. It’s about the MS Sally.”

The PM frowned. This problem rose to the surface at regular intervals, often  creating negative media coverage. He adjusted his glasses, a sign that he was ready to hear more.

“We have a connection between the MS Sally and the Member of Parliament who was recently murdered, Leo Hoffberg.”

“Yes, yes, I know,” said the PM, as he opened the binder to the letter H. “He was a pain in the ass when he was on the Defence Committee, always revealing secret information to the public. And his point of view that we were trying to impede the investigation into why the Sally went down was just embarrassing. I hope we weren’t behind his murder.”

“No, of course not, but the investigation into his death has, uh, revealed something of extreme importance. You were informed by email yesterday.”

“I was at a conference here yesterday,” said the PM, “and I’ve never trusted email very much. What’s this all about?”

“We have an indication that a Russian nuclear weapon has been removed from the MS Sally.” The NSS Director stopped for a few seconds, doing everything he could to get the PM’s attention. “And we don’t know where it is.”

When the MS Sally had gone down, the Swedish government had been informed about the possibility that a nuclear weapon had been on board, and the Prime Minister had reversed his initial promise to bring up as many bodies as possible for burial, declaring instead that the sunken ship was now a sacred burial ground, off-limits to the entire world.

Initial dives had never revealed any weapons, but he’d been advised the safest step for the future would be to cover the ship with gravel and concrete, creating a huge sarcophagus and shaping it so that any explosion in the future would create a wave which would be directed across the Baltic towards St. Petersburg, Russia, but not Stockholm. It had been difficult to inform the public of all these steps without telling them the entire story, but he had succeeded, using his expert ability to lie.

The skin on the PM’s forehead wrinkled into an ugly maze, a sign that he was experiencing extreme stress. “Does anyone else know this? Have the police found this out?”

“No, Prime Minister, we’re keeping everyone in the dark. They have to solve the murder, and there are a few bits of evidence that might be difficult to explain, but so far no one has been able to put it together.”

“This goes nowhere,” said the PM, “and I mean nowhere else. I’ll keep it from the rest of the government ministers and you’ll keep it inside the NSS. We can’t let this get out. There’d be panic.”

“Yes, Prime Minister.”

“Do you have any idea where this weapon might be? How was Hoffberg involved in all this?”

“We’re not sure yet, Prime Minister. It appears he might have purchased a manual for the weapon while he was in Estonia.”

“A manual? So he intended to use it. Or sell it. Do we know how he got his hands on the weapon? Where is the safest place for the government right now? I’ll need some answers soon.”

“Yes, Prime Minister, of course. We’re working on all of those questions, but it would be a great help if you began to prepare a contingency plan in case we’re forced to evacuate some part of the country because of this. We have an obligation to report this to the SRSA, Rescue Services, or at least to the Little Reference Group for consideration.”

“No,” retorted the PM, “there will be no evacuations. We can’t evacuate people without explaining why, and there will be no explanations about this. Ever. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Prime Minister,” said the chief of the National Security Service, as he bowed his head to the grim anger he saw appear on the PM’s face. “No evacuations,” he continued. “We’ll find another way to solve this.”

“Be sure you do,” said the PM, “and be sure I’m kept informed. There will be regular daily briefings from now on, but we’ll have to be careful not to arouse suspicions there’s something happening. I’ll fly back to my farmhouse and you’ll come there every evening at a different time each day, between 7 and 10 pm.”

“Yes, Prime Minister.”

“And remember, keep the police out of this. We don’t need to read about this in the evening papers.”

“Of course, Prime Minister.”

*

That the media people were holding off gave Sara something new to think about. In the beginning they’d been eager to follow up on the Hoffberg widow, and now they’d just disappeared. There had been no further interviews, no background articles on Hoffberg and no scathing accusations about how little was getting done.

Sara appreciated the chance to work without having to think about a string of journalists on her tail all the time. Still, it was weird, not at all like them, and she wondered if maybe Ekman had used his considerable influence on the media power-people. She didn’t get too much time to worry about it though; she’d been right about the world of banking.

As soon as the banks opened on Monday, Dan called Sara and said he’d been able to find a copy of the document used to authorise the 50,000 euro payment to the account in Switzerland. It was an invoice for a manual from an Estonian trading company, and there was a note stating that the tax authorities had been alerted about the lack of VAT registration for the company. Leo Hoffberg’s estate would soon receive an invoice from the Swedish tax authorities, and his inheritor would have to pay a twenty-five per cent Swedish Value Added Tax for the purchase. Leo would be taxed even after his death.

Sara told Dan to get this onto the whiteboard. They’d go through it and anything else that had come up during his investigation.

Dan picked up the marker pen on the tray below the whiteboard and looked for a place to insert the few words that were relevant for tomorrow’s meeting. In the column under Hoffberg’s name he found the notation about the trip to Tallinn, and managed to squeeze in Bank payment €50K next to it. As he began to write the name of the company on the invoice the black marker pen ran out of ink, and he exchanged it, finishing with the name in bright blue.

*

Leo Hoffberg and Martin Spimler had met with the man from Teknologikka Ltd only once. He’d come to the SAS Radisson in Tallinn just after they arrived from the airport, calling Leo’s room from the lobby. He was a tall man, powerful, and wore his khaki t-shirt like a soldier out of uniform. His strained smile had revealed two stainless steel teeth in the front of his mouth, and after that Spimler had called him ‘Jaws’. The man wore a black leather jacket that seemed heavy, and Leo had wondered if it had been lined with Kevlar. Their conversation in the lobby was carried out in English, but the man spoke with an obvious Russian accent.

“I have you document,” he said. “It is with me. I want money.”

“Of course,” Leo said, “I can arrange that, but I’ll need a paper to give to the bank in Sweden. Can I see the document?”

“On CD,” the man said. “Show you on computer.” And he produced a laptop, inserted the CD into it and started it up. In a few minutes he was prompted for a password for the CD, and he spun the laptop away from view and typed it in. “I get money, you get password to CD and original book,” he said. “Now you see document.”

Leo groaned heavily as the document filled the computer screen. It was written in Cyrillic and there was no way he would be able to interpret it. He turned to Martin, who seemed to be less perturbed.

“I had to study Russian in the military,” said Martin. “We were supposed to use it to be able to figure out how to use the weapons we could get off them if we ever were in a war with them. I wouldn’t be able to translate War and Peace, but this should be simple enough if they’ve included the usual drawings.”

The man from Teknologikka Ltd allowed them to view the manual for only a few minutes. “Now you see it real. No money, no manual.” He removed the CD from the laptop. “You pay, you get manual.” He got to his feet, preparing to leave. “You like Estonia?” he had asked. “Plenty nice Russian women. You want?”

“No,” said Leo, “we don’t. I’ll need a document to be able to arrange payment from the bank account. If you create an invoice and scan it in then I’ll do the transfer from here. You can send the scanned document to my private email address. You can watch me make the payment, then you can give us the manual after that.” He wrote his Swedish email account on the back of a business card he still carried from the Swedish Parliament. The man from Teknologikka smiled in stainless steel and left with a heavyset, balding man who’d been sitting on the opposite side of the lobby during the negotiations. He’d returned in less than twenty minutes, shoved a single piece of paper into Leo Hoffberg’s hands and watched as the bank transfer was accomplished.

As soon as the receipt of transfer had been issued, he slapped the dull orange-coloured manual and the CD onto the table in front of Leo and left without another word.

*

Sara called Spimler’s wife to see if she could help her with any details about her husband’s trip to Tallinn with Hoffberg.

“I knew that he’d gone to Estonia in August,” said Mrs Spimler. “It was some kind of environmental conference about fishing in the Baltic. Martin spent a lot of time researching water and was convinced fish populations were being affected by pollution coming from Poland and Estonia. He could be very provocative when it came to the environment. Do you think that might have something to do with his disappearance?” she asked.

“We don’t know anything yet,” said Sara, trying to divulge as little as she could, but still keep her talking, “but it might help us if you had any other information about that trip. Do you know which hotel he stayed at?”

“Is there a SAS Radisson in Tallinn? I think he said he was staying there. The conference organisers must have been paying for it, Martin was always so stingy when it came to where he stayed.”

“I’ll check that out if you like,” said Sara. “Do you know the name of the conference organisers?”

“No,” she said, “just that it had something to do with fish. He kept everything in that cardboard box I gave you.” Sara could hear her draw a deep breath to keep from sobbing. “This is driving me crazy,” said Maria Spimler.

“Yes, well I’m sure he’ll turn up soon,” said Sara, but she could hear that her voice didn’t carry the conviction she tried to convey.

“Are you sure you haven’t found out anything? Is he with someone and you’re just not telling me?” Now her sobbing couldn’t be controlled.

Sara felt like shit, not being able to tell her what she knew, and she excused herself, hung up the phone, then went into the Hoffberg room to see if anyone else was there before leaving for the day, hoping to find someone who could tell her she wasn’t a bad person.

*

The room was empty and dark when Sara went in. She turned on the lights and sat down at the table full of binders and bags of evidence, then looked up at the whiteboard to see what Dan had written about the document that had been used for the bank payment to Switzerland.

She had to stand up again when she saw it. It was the same name Robert had mentioned when he’d traced the company owning the car that Lemko drove when he left Stallarholmen for southern Sweden, now in bright blue letters on the whiteboard. Teknologikka.

“Oh yes!” she shouted to no one except herself. “I’ve got you now.”

Chapter 14

When Sara got to work on Tuesday there was a note on her desk. Ekman wanted her to call as soon as she got in. She had the team meeting in the Hoffberg room before coffee, so when Ekman didn’t answer she went to her meeting first. Cantsten was there, holding her binder full of current cases, all dressed up to go somewhere, asking for an update and if they had anyone for her to arrest yet. There was the usual grumbling about needing a caffeine jolt, but the team seemed to wake up without it when Sara connected the dots about the company in Tallinn, Teknologikka, and how it was connected to the Hoffberg bank transfer, the Volvo and the house outside Trelleborg. Dan told them that he’d found out that besides owning the Volvo, Teknologikka also owned a motorcycle.

There were grins on everyone’s faces that morning, and they all knew they had their villain. Lemko was as good as behind bars, and Sara had managed to get them onto the right track without even mentioning the manual she’d been forced to leave with Ekman.

She asked Cantsten if she could get a search warrant for Lemko’s house in Trelleborg, and thought she could hear bureaucratic wheels spinning in Cantsten’s head as she waited for the answer to appear on the inside of her eyes.

“Is this the only evidence you have? Our murder victim paid money into the account of a company that owns a house in Trelleborg? The company also owns a car that might have been observed near the scene of the murder, and the driver appears to have been a female member of the clergy. Have you uncovered any motive which might help me understand why I should allow you to enter and search property owned by a foreign entity? Taxes? Has the company paid their Swedish taxes?”

Sara looked at Dan, who’d been following up that lead. “Yes,” he said, “they’ve paid all their taxes: property tax, vehicle taxes, everything.”

“OK,” said Cantsten, “why would this company want to kill the victim? You’ve said he paid them money. Usually it’s the other way around: people get killed because they don’t pay.”

“Maybe that’s why he was killed,” Sara said. “Maybe he was supposed to pay them more money and he refused.”

“OK,” said Cantsten, “then why the torture? What’s that about?”

“Maybe he wouldn’t tell the murderer something. Maybe he was killed when the murderer realised it was a dead end.”

“I’m hearing lots of maybes here, and I still have a hard time connecting them to a foreign company,” said Cantsten as she looked at Sara and smiled. It was the first time Sara had seen Cantsten show any emotion at all and she felt like she’d won the lottery; she knew Cantsten was going to give her the search warrant.

Then she saw Cantsten’s lips tighten as she continued, “What I think is that maybe you people aren’t giving me enough to go on. I won’t be ridiculed by some judge who thinks I haven’t been an Assistant DA long enough to run a murder case, and I won’t be giving you a search warrant to open a house owned by a foreign company and risk an incident with the Foreign Office unless you give me something more to go on. This is inadequate so far. You can have another two weeks of wiretap on Spimler’s wife, and I hope you use it to find out where he’s gone, because that’s where you’re going to find the solution to this case.”

Cantsten left, apologising for having to attend a court session, making Sara feel like she’d just wasted her precious time again.

The team just sat there. Dan lowered his head to his desk, quietly banging it onto the oaken surface, and Robert shook his head back and forth to some unheard rhythm.

Sara looked around after Cantsten had gone, and the glee that was there only a minute ago was now transformed to gloom. “OK, guys,” she said, “Spimler. I don’t care how you do it, but find this guy. He has to be somewhere.”

*

It was obvious Sara would have to do some background checking on her own down in Trelleborg, and she was on her way back to her office to find a better hotel in Malmö when her cell phone started playing the refrain from the Beatles’ song When I’m Sixty-Four, a ringtone she’d assigned to John Hurtree, the ex-US Army CID field agent who’d helped her a few years back on an almost-impossible case.

“Hello, John,” said Sara, “It’s been a while.”

“It has,” he said, “and I’m flattered you remember me.”

“You’re a hard man to forget, John,” she said, and meant it. Hurtree had nearly got her fired because of his obsession with solving a case he’d been following for more than forty years, and now he was in her backyard again.

Sara began to feel a little uneasy. “I’ve got a lot to do right now, John. Glad to hear from you again. I hope you enjoy Stockholm and I’ll call you when I get back. I have to go to southern Sweden now on a case. Bye.”

“OK,” said Hurtree, his voice the pitch of smoked whisky. “That’s great. I was going to southern Sweden myself. A place called Trelleborg. Hope you enjoy your trip.”

It was not so much what he said, as the way he said it. Sara began to feel Hurtree knew something connected to the Hoffberg case, and now he was trying to tell her something. Ekman’s words ran through her mind again: “Has Hurtree contacted you yet? He will.”

It felt like Ekman was running the show again. The NSS was always out in front of them, thought Sara, directing them like little puppets. She was being used and she knew it, but maybe she could get something out of Hurtree. At least it’d be interesting to hear what he’d been doing for the past few years.

“OK, John,” said Sara. “I’m driving down this afternoon. We can meet when you get there.”

“Yeah, sure,” Hurtree said, almost cheerfully. “Unless you want some company on the way down? I’ll pay for half your gas if you let me ride down with you.”

“Can you be quiet if I ask you to?” Hurtree had a tendency to disrupt her train of thought and Sara knew it would be difficult to think with him in the car. Still, it’d be a six-hour trip alone otherwise. Maybe he could help her stay awake.

“Oh hell, yes, Sara. I’ll keep you awake with silent shadow puppets, you know me.”

Sara could see his contagious smile, and the strange fatherly feelings this old guy conjured up wouldn’t stay put. “OK, if you can be at the Central Train Station here in the city in half an hour then I’ll pick you up.”

“That’s easy. That’s where I am right now. Bye.”

Sara looked at the yellow note stuck on the face of her computer monitor again, and dialled Ekman’s number.

He answered almost immediately. “Hello Sara, I saw that you had called. I was on the toilet.” Ekman was always informative, never left anything to guesswork. But if he wanted someone to be in the dark, it became pitch black. “We have to talk about the Hoffberg case. Now.”

“OK,” she said, “I guess I can move some meetings to another time. Can we do it over the phone?”

“I shouldn’t, but I will,” said Ekman. “The Hoffberg case just became a matter of national security. Our offices will be handling it from now on. You can bring me all the current files today and begin working on your other case backlog. No details are to be leaked to the press under any circumstances, and I’ll hold you personally responsible if anyone on your team starts talking to their reporter friends. I thank you and your team for your efforts.”

Sara could hear that Ekman was already hanging up the phone as he said those last few words, which became fainter in her ear and ended with a click on the other end, so he didn’t get to hear her reply. “Shit…Sir.”

*

She went back into the Hoffberg room, and the team just stared at her when they heard the news.

“National Security,” she said, as she used her camera to make a photo of the whiteboard and then erased it. “This case is now closed for us. That means we have to work our case backlog. Prepare to drop all your files onto this USB memory stick and bundle up any paperwork or other evidence into boxes for transport over to the NSS building. This case is now out of our hands.”

There was silence as they did what Sara had told them to do, worker bees concentrating on their tasks without complaint. When she went over to Dan’s computer to download his files onto the USB memory stick he asked her in a low voice, “What about Spimler?”

“What do you mean, what about Spimler?” asked Sara.

“I mean, he’s still disappeared, couldn’t we work on his disappearance for a while? Unconnected to the murder of Hoffberg, of course.” He looked up at her, his boyish grin spreading to fill his face. “I mean, Spimler’s still missing. Isn’t that backlog?”

“Hardly,” Sara said, “and you know it. We have serious cases of homicide to deal with. That’s what we do. Let Missing Persons deal with Spimler from now on, or the NSS can consider him a prime suspect. We’re off this case, and that’s it. And the lid is on. Anyone speaks to the press, or girlfriends of the press, anyone at all, is out of a job, I’ll see to that,” she said as she raised her voice. Sara was pissed off, and everyone in the room heard it. “Get all your stuff about the Hoffberg case onto the cart and get it off to Ekman at the NSS. I’m taking a couple of days off, beginning now.”

*

Sara was in the garage starting her car before she realised what she’d done: allowing her anger to run her life again. A bad move, she thought, and one she’d probably pay for later, but it had felt good, felt necessary. She could at least get some kind of control back into her life.

The man who’d taught her some of the Buddhist rituals she practised had told her that in the industrial world it was the office workers who made up most of his clients. In his country, India, it was the farmers. His theory was that in Sweden the office workers had as little control over their working environment as the Indian farmers had over the weather and all the other factors controlling their working life. The guru thought this explained why the need for contemplation and a search for inner values brought him such good business.

Sara had told him that in Sweden there weren’t too many farmers left, and the explanation left him with only his inscrutable smile as he explained how she could balance on one foot while performing her chant.

Nearly an hour had elapsed since Hurtree’s call when she arrived at the Central Train Station, but he was still waiting for her outside. He recognised her car as she pulled up at the passenger loading zone. Sara could see that although time had managed to fade the paint job on her Peugeot, it had done little to Hurtree. She wondered if he could grow old at all.

“Hello, John, sorry I’m late. Woman’s prerogative,” she said after he’d stowed his single suitcase next to hers in the trunk.

“That’s OK,” said Hurtree, “I’m only freezing. Man’s prerogative.”

“That’s what keeps you young, I guess. How’ve you been?” she asked, and pulled her car out onto the road which would take them south.

“Still alive, as far as I can tell,” he said. “Not like your usual clients. What takes you to Trelleborg?”

“No, John. What takes you to Trelleborg? I’m on business. Or I was, anyway – now I’m not even sure if I’m going there at all. If I do I’ll be on a mini-holiday.”

“Oh, I just thought I’d look at some of the sights down there,” said Hurtree. “You know, old churches, museums, cows, sheep, stuff like that.”

“Right, especially the cows and sheep. I talked to Ekman the other day. He said you’d probably be contacting me. It sounded like he knew you were coming. Is there something you’re not telling me I should know?” asked Sara.

“No – at least, nothing I know about yet. You people up here are always so secretive, so I have to figure out what you mean from what you’re not saying.” Hurtree glanced out the car window at the traffic jam surrounding them. “How long will we be sitting in this mess?”

“About fifteen minutes. After that it’s a six-hour drive to Trelleborg. Have you booked a hotel yet? You do remember I’ll stop and kick you out if you get on my nerves?”

“Oh yeah, I remember. Your temper is still a big part of my memory, little lady. And no, no hotel yet. But maybe you can suggest something.”

“The only thing I can suggest is a crappy fleabag hotel in Malmö, but you can call them if you’re willing to take the risk. We’ll be in about eight o’clock tonight and that’s not a good time to shop around. Sorry about the temper tantrum. I’m still pissed off after a lousy day at work,” said Sara, her eyes fixed on the cars creeping slowly in front of them.

Hurtree called and booked his hotel room while she rummaged in the glove box to find her blue light, turned it on and with her left hand placed it on the roof.

The sun was already beginning to sink beyond the horizon as they started to pick up speed, leaving most of the commuters behind them. She stole a look at Hurtree as he looked out of his window. He still hadn’t told her why he was going to Trelleborg, but she knew that he would, and probably before they arrived. Hurtree always took his time, always tried to get as much information as he gave.

“Trelleborg?” she asked again.

“Cows, sheep. You know.” And in the dusk, Sara could see the slight curve of a smile on his face as he said, “I was going to look up someone down there. An old acquaintance. Just to see if he’s still working. Old times and all that.”

“Is this another one of your unsolved cases?” she asked. “The last time you were here you were trying to solve a case you’d been working nearly half your life. You never give up.”

“No, never learned how. And this guy was never part of a case I couldn’t solve. But it is strange, you and I going to the same town. What takes you there?”

“Actually, I’m not going there anymore,” said Sara. “I was working a case which would’ve taken me there, but we got kicked off it today, so I’ve taken a couple of days off to get my head straight. I hate it when I can’t finish a case.”

“Yeah, I know that feeling alright,” said Hurtree. “Can you tell me why you got kicked off the case?”

“It became a matter of national security,” Sara said. It was getting too dark to see Hurtree’s face, so she couldn’t tell if he was smiling or not, but the sound of his voice told her he was choosing his words very carefully.

“In matters of national security you’d wanna keep the circles of information very small to avoid information leaks. I’d guess Ekman was involved.”

“Ekman pisses me off sometimes,” said Sara, “and you still haven’t told me what you plan to do in Trelleborg.”

“Counting cows and sheep,” said Hurtree. “Mostly that. So how’s life been since I was here last?”

“Moo you too, Hurtree,” she said. It was obvious Sara wouldn’t be able to get much more out of him at the moment, and they spent the rest of the trip talking about his last trip, and what had happened to the people they’d met then.

After an hour of comparing notes they both got tired of talking and Hurtree stared out the window as Sara fixed her gaze on the white dividing line on the highway. She’d almost forgotten Hurtree was in the car until they began to approach the city of Malmö and the road signs began to include the distance to Trelleborg.

“Yeah, too bad it’s so late,” said Hurtree, startling her, “otherwise I could maybe take a peek at this guy’s house in Trelleborg. Just to see if he’s home.”

“It’s late,” Sara said, “and Trelleborg is at least an hour’s drive from here and another hour back. If we were to drive out there we’d just end up sleeping in the car.”

“That might save some money,” said Hurtree. Sara had forgotten about his extreme stinginess – he was the only person she’d ever met who ate his lunch at the giveaway stands in shopping centres. Then Hurtree continued, “So does that mean you’d actually take a swing out to Trelleborg right now?”

“It means you can cancel our hotel rooms,” said Sara. “And you can start to look for something in Trelleborg as we drive. Sleeping in cars gives me a pain in the back and I’m grumpy enough already. Do you know how to get to your friend’s house?”

Hurtree rummaged in the satchel between his feet and was soon waving a map with driving instructions. He called the hotel to cancel their rooms, then called a 24/7 travel agency that he’d used before to find them a place to stay in Trelleborg. They were still waiting for the call from the travel agency when he called out an exit off the highway.

“Your friend lives outside of Trelleborg,” Sara said, recognising the same road that would soon lead them to Lemko’s farmhouse. “Are you sure you know where you’re going?”

“Well, I’ve never been there before,” he said, “but I got a map off the internet, and with the satellite picture we should even be able to figure out what the house looks like. If you slowed down a little, you could get ready to turn off onto a gravel road in just a few minutes.”

Hurtree told her when to turn off, and when to turn again onto an even smaller road leading up a hill covered with birch trees. When they reached the top he told her to stop and turn off the lights.

“John, I never parked out in the forest with boys, even when I was younger, and I certainly can’t imagine it with you. You’d better explain why we’re here, and quickly.”

Hurtree pointed out of her window as he handed her a pair of enhanced binoculars for night viewing that he’d taken out of his satchel, and there in the moonlight Sara could just make out a farmhouse with a white trim at the bottom of the hill. Then recognition hit her.

“But that’s Lemko’s house. John, you could have told me this before we got here,” she said. “This is where I was going before I got pulled off the case. This is my suspect’s house.”

“Really?” asked Hurtree, and Sara could hear he wasn’t surprised at all. “Is that what you call him up here? We called him Schneller when I carried a badge. Well, now we’re here, what do you say to a little stakeout, just for fun?”

“I’m off the case, John, can’t lift a finger.”

“No, but you can park with me out in the woods. That wouldn’t hurt anyone, at least not me,” said Hurtree, and he took up two candy bars and a soda pop. “So tell me, what makes you want to find, what did you call him, Lemko?”

“What makes you interested in, what did you call him, Schneller?” asked Sara.

“Well now, Sara, it’s kinda sensitive. You know, me being just a tourist and not having any good reason to be here and all that.”

“Well, it’s the same for me. I just happen to be here in the woods in the middle of the night with an ex-CID officer who won’t tell me what he’s doing here, so fill me in or I’m driving back to Trelleborg and sleeping in a real bed,” said Sara, and she put her right hand on the key, preparing to start the car.

“OK,” said Hurtree, “OK. Someone asked me to find out where Schneller was hiding out. It doesn’t matter who, but they don’t know what he looks like and I do, or at least did. I had a couple of run-ins with him just before I left the service. He was a Stasi agent then, and he had two specialities. The first was that he ran a network of spies here in Sweden, and the other was he arranged weapons deals via East Germany. We got involved when we found out he was stealing from our supply depots in the German forests. He managed to get hold of five battle tanks and three armoured personnel carriers. Can you imagine that? He smuggled them out in railroad cars. We even heard of deals with some of Sweden’s top arms manufacturers, but the scuttlebutt was pretty unbelievable, at least at the time.”

“Weapons? Did we sell weapons to East Germany?” asked Sara.

“Well, not officially. The Swedish connection was mostly gunpowder and cannon shells. And he was good at it, so it was hard for us to find him.”

“You said you knew what he looked like?” Sara asked. “Would you recognise a photograph of him if you saw one?”

“Maybe, maybe not,” said Hurtree. “He was good at disguises. He’d walk into a women’s clothing store as a man and come out five minutes later as a woman.”

“But you knew where to look for him? Did you say a woman? How did you know where to look?”

Hurtree looked down at his satchel again. “Do you want another candy bar?” he asked. “No? I got these for free at a supermarket in Denmark. They were giving them away as samples. I probably have enough candy to last me for a week.” He tore off the wrapping and took a bite, and Sara waited for him to swallow. Hurtree always liked to take his time, and right now he thought they had plenty of it.

Chapter 15

Hurtree leaned against the car seat, stretching his back as he began telling Sara what few Swedes had ever been allowed to hear.

“When East Germany broke down in 1989, Stasi headquarters was left wide open for a few days. There were millions of documents there, whole floors of files on practically the entire country, and hordes of East Germans stormed the building to see what was there, find out if they were in the files. For us, the important part was to get to the files they had on their own agent network, which was well developed, and to discover what they knew about our agents. The CIA was there only hours after the wall went down and they managed to get a lot of background on Stasi agents, codenames, operational files – very detailed stuff. It was all compiled and sent back home, and then they were used to barter with the security police in those countries where it was valuable.”

Hurtree took a long sip from his soda. “I wouldn’t know, but I’m sure your guys would’ve been informed about Schneller a long time ago, and they, like us, knew where to look. Hell, you guys probably had someone who even knew what he looked like. We always suspected he lived somewhere in Sweden, since we always lost him at the border between Sweden and Germany or Denmark, but he gave himself away when he used a company in Estonia as a filter for payments. You must have heard of them. Teknologikka? But that doesn’t explain what you’re doing here, Sara. Unless you’ve changed jobs, you only worked with homicides before. Has Schneller been a bad boy?”

“All I can tell you is my murder case turned out to be a matter of national security this morning, and our case on the suspect who lives in the house down there was transferred to the NSS. Remember Ekman? He told me you’d be contacting me, so I assume you’ve had contact with him.”

Hurtree answered without hesitation. “No,” he said, “I’d forgotten Ekman’s name until you mentioned it earlier. I haven’t had contact myself, but I can easily imagine the names of a few people who might. So if you were taken off the case, why were you driving down here? Why aren’t you back in your office trying to nail some narco-killer?”

“So you’re here to help catch Schneller, is that it, John?” Sara wouldn’t let him off the hook this time.

“Me? Here? Cows and sheep, like I said.” And his voice smiled, even though the darkness concealed the contour of his face.

The car was getting colder and Sara zipped up her jacket. She turned to Hurtree’s dark shape next to her. “John, when you were active, did you ever get tired of it all? I mean, was there ever a time when you doubted what you were doing?”

“Sure. Happened a lot. Especially when some stupid soldier got away with a crime I knew he did, but by some quirk of fate I couldn’t prove. That kind of stuff. Made me wonder why I was doing it, yeah. Why? You getting tired of chasing bad guys?”

“No, but I wonder what the point is sometimes.” Sara knew she could open up to Hurtree. He wasn’t a colleague, someone she’d have to see every day at work. “I mean, we do our best, and there’s still a mountain of crimes we can’t even get to which are written off to make our statistics look better. And I don’t know why I drove down here. It was simply something I had to do, an impulse. Everything seemed to point to the house down there, and I guess I felt if I could sit somewhere nearby I’d figure out something. I sometimes meditate to get away from it all. Funny, but there’re times when that’s when the best ideas come to me.”

“What? When you’re running away from yourself? I knew you meditated, but I thought you did it to find yourself. How can you find yourself if you’re running away from yourself?”

“Fuck you, Hurtree,” said Sara. “I don’t need a lesson in cheap philosophy from you.”

“Sounds to me like you’re still living alone. You were just as grumpy the last time I saw you. Maybe it’s time you got a real life.”

“What, like yours?” asked Sara. “What kind of life have you got to be proud of? I mean, when your boots are on for the last time, will there be anyone at your funeral?” She saw Hurtree turn his face away into the darkness.

“Sorry,” she said, “that was a cheap shot.”

“Yeah,” said Hurtree, “it was. True, but easy to use. You’re all too right. I gave up on having a life long before I retired. The job became the reason to keep breathing. Now, without the job I wonder why I still bother. Very depressing sometimes. Then something like this turns up and I get to do something which could be useful, or at least I can pretend it might be useful. Gets me all fired up. Almost like falling in love.”

“Did you ever do that, Hurtree, fall in love?”

“Now you’re getting personal,” said Hurtree. “Too personal even for you.”

He raised his binoculars again, and said, “I haven’t been able to see any movement down there since we got here. Are you sure there’s anyone there at all?”

“According to our guys in Malmö the house is empty. They’ve been looking at this house for several days now. I was chasing him for a murder I think he did up near Stockholm.”

“And so what makes you think he’s here? Maybe he caught a boat to the continent. Especially if he’s a murderer.”

“Just a hunch. You know me, John, all method until it comes to the nitty-gritty, then it’s intuition for the rest of the day.”

“Speaking of the day,” said Hurtree, “When does the sun come up around here? Or does it come up at all?”

Sara gave Hurtree a short lesson in Nordic daytime hours, explaining that the sun setting some time in October and rising again in March was something that you could only experience above the Arctic Circle, which although well within the territorial boundaries of Sweden, was still over eight hundred miles to the north. “Sweden’s an elongated country,” she said, “sort of like a long banana.”

“Well, at least a country that is long on action. Look at that.” And he pointed to a caravan of black sedans, using only their parking lights as they positioned themselves along the road near a thicket of firs that obstructed the view from Lemko’s house. “Looks like our friend is about to get a visit from the boys in black.”

“You’re right,” Sara said. “I wonder what makes them think he’s at home?”

“Maybe they’re just doing a practice raid. Well, if he is home you can be sure he’s got a tunnel built as an escape route,” said Hurtree, and he told her the story about the time he’d followed Schneller into an open square in Berlin, losing him in a telephone booth that had been placed over an opening to the city’s sewer system.

The sun would be coming up over the horizon in another half an hour, and the sky to the east took on a lighter shade. They both saw the contour of a shed in the trees behind the house and Sara’s eyes followed a path that led from the shed up into the trees, away from the house. She thought she saw movement, something leaving the shed, but there was nothing there when she looked again.

Was that my eyelash on the lens? I’ll never get used to using binoculars.

She got out of the car, watching the NSS team surround the house, motioning to each other, finally smashing in doors and windows in their final penetration.

A noise just to her right, something raining on the leaves, made her turn in surprise as the motorcycle came out of nowhere. It was soundless, black, a ghostly horse and rider rushing out of nowhere, then disappearing into the darkness, the rider hunched over the handlebars. The bike sprayed Sara with gravel as it disappeared.

“Jesus! What was that, John?”

“It looked like a motorcycle, but I didn’t hear anything. It doesn’t matter, it has to be Schneller. It has to be. Back in the car. Let’s get after him.”

Sara started her car and spun out in the gravel. She honked her horn several times, hoping the men from the NSS would hear and follow. She saw the brake light on the bike flash red in front of them, and it looked like he veered to the right after that.

He was heading for Trelleborg, Sara was certain of it, and she wound the motor of her little Peugeot beyond the red line at each shift of gears. Schneller was still way in front of them, barely visible as a darker dot on the road that went by the village church at Gylle.

“Can you find out where we are on your map?” she shouted to Hurtree, who was hunched over several pages of printouts.

“No, I’m off the map after the church, but from the looks of it, railroad tracks cross between us and the city.”

“I wonder what kind of bike he’s on? It was silent but I can barely keep up with him,” said Sara.

“Must be one of those new electric bikes. Environmentally correct monsters, but they can break the speed limit almost anywhere. Maybe we can ask him when you catch him – his battery has to run out some time.”

“I’ve gotta get him first,” she said. “Can you see if there’s anyone following us?”

“No headlights I can see,” said Hurtree, after turning to look behind them. “Shouldn’t you call for some kind of backup?”

“I’m not supposed to be here. And how would I explain you?”

“I’m just a tourist. Isn’t that one of your robot cop cameras?”

“Smile,” said Sara as they sped by the stainless steel post which blinked a strobe light when they passed. “We just got our picture taken.”

“I hope you can afford the fine. Any idea where he’s headed? Maybe we can get in front of him.”

Sara swerved to avoid a dimly-lit tractor hauling a trailer. “He has to be headed for the ferry terminal, and there’s no shorter way I know of. I’ll just have to drive faster.” And they became airborne as her car left the viaduct over the railway tracks, leaving sparks behind them as part of the undercarriage scraped the pavement on impact.

*

When they got into the city of Trelleborg, the street lights helped keep the bike in view, but he was still way out in front. Hurtree had found Sara’s map of Trelleborg in the door pocket, but she already knew the destination. The ferry terminal would be a sharp right as the road reached the water. Brake lights ahead flashed for a second, then disappeared.

“He just made a right,” said Hurtree.

“On it,” she said, and the Peugeot lifted two wheels as she went through the corner. “Get ready to run up some stairs when we get to the terminal. We’ve got to try to stop him from getting on board the ship. As soon as he gets through customs this becomes very difficult.”

The bike lay on its side in front of the entrance to the ferry terminal, discarded and worthless to Schneller as he bounded up the rolling staircase that led to the terminal. Hurtree was after him like a shot as soon as Sara stopped the car. She hit the warning lights, took a pair of handcuffs out of the glove compartment and joined Hurtree in his rush up the stairs.

My God, where does Hurtree get his strength? I know people his age who get winded using the elevator.

When Sara reached the top of the stairs she saw Hurtree scanning the crowd of passengers as they milled about the terminal, some waiting to purchase their tickets, others waiting for friends to arrive, others just waiting for the customs gate to open. He motioned for Sara to wait for him and disappeared into the men’s room, coming out in less than a minute, calling her over to him.

“I think I know where he is,” said Hurtree, “but I think you’re better equipped to go in there.” He motioned to the door of the women’s restroom. “Be careful,” he said. “This guy can be dangerous when he’s trapped.”

“Keep everyone else out of here until I come out,” Sara said, “and try to get some help from security if you can.”

There were three women in the ladies’ room when Sara went inside; a barrel-like, older woman who was washing her hands near the exit, a teenager with black hair applying way too much make-up, and a tall blonde at the end of the room who was concentrating on the mirror as she adjusted a scarf around her neck.

Sara stooped under the stalls and saw a pile of clothes and a black motorcycle helmet lying on the floor under one of them. She couldn’t see any feet, so Schneller was either standing on the toilet or had already left. She took out her badge and asked the women to leave the room.

It was the strength of her perfume that did it, that and the large gold ring on her right hand that seemed to belie the feminine shape that walked past her on her way out.

Sara shouted for the blonde to stop and moved in behind her, grasping her left arm which now had become a bicep of steel. Sara somehow got a wrist lock and drove Schneller into the tiled wall, and knew from his deep male grunt that she’d made no mistake.

Schneller tried to drive a stiletto heel through her foot, but Sara was prepared for it and he was thrown off balance long enough for her to twist her wrist lock even harder, and he went down on both knees, wincing in pain.

Sara put the cold metal of the handcuffs on his neck, dislodging the blonde wig. “Stop resisting or I’ll blow your head off.”

Schneller relaxed and slowly brought his right hand behind his back, allowing her to handcuff him just as a customs security officer poked her head through the door. “Everything OK?” she asked.

“Everything’s just fine,” said Sara, “I’m a police officer and I’ll need a room for this prisoner, if you have one.”

“You can use our female search room,” said the security officer, helping her lead Schneller out and through the passengers who had assembled to observe the event.

Sara saw Hurtree’s grin and his double thumbs-up as she steered Schneller towards the search room. Schneller stopped, looked at Hurtree, then returned his gaze to Sara. His wig was now hanging awry and he shook his head to loosen it. Several people gasped as the wig fell to the floor, and there was a lot of pointing and commotion before she and the security officer managed to get him into the search room.

Sara sat him down on the only chair in the room, flashed her police ID card and perched on the table as she waved a goodbye to the security officer. “I’ll just sit here with him until the rest of my team arrives,” she said, and they were left alone.

Schneller looked at the floor, avoiding eye contact, and slipped his feet out of the high heels. The disparity between his attire and his head added several years to his age, and now he looked like an elderly cross-dresser, pathetic and sorrowful.

Sara remembered what Hurtree had said about him being dangerous when cornered, so she jumped down and put the table between them. “OK, Lemko, or should I call you Schneller? I’ve got you for the murder of Leo Hoffberg. You’re going down for that, and you know it. Why not make it a little easier for yourself and tell me what you’ve done with Spimler?”

Schneller stopped looking at the floor. His intense blue eyes caught Sara’s for the first time. There was a coldness there which made her shiver. She felt like she’d captured some kind of predator, and it was eyeing her for lunch. Sara took another step back, away from the table, and as she did so his lips formed a grim smile of recognition.

“Yes,” he said, “you’re right to back away.”

“Spimler,” Sara asked. “What did you do to him?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “I had no contact with anyone called Spimler.”

“Hoffberg must have told you something,” Sara said.

“Mr Hoffberg didn’t tell me anything.” Then he said deliberately, “Although he could have saved his life if he had.”

“Tell me about it. Tell me what happened out there.” Sara was surprised he’d opened up so quickly. She usually had to sweat suspects for hours before they gave up and confessed. This was too easy.

“I have told you what you need to know. I killed Mr Hoffberg.”

“How?” Sara asked.

“I shot him twice in the chest,” he said, his face emotionless, relating what had happened as if he were telling Sara about buying a carton of milk. “He might have been dead already from the electric shocks I’d been giving him, but I shot him just to make sure.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Because if he wasn’t going to tell me anything then he wasn’t going to tell anyone else either.”

“But why?” Sara asked again.

“Why what?” asked Schneller.

“Why did you kill him?”

“I like it,” he said, and he dropped his head again, staring at the floor.

“And the torture? Why that?”

“I enjoy that most of all,” said Schneller softly, still staring at the floor. He rubbed his face on his shoulder, relieving an itch.

“I have another question,” Sara said. “Who was it that hired you? Who was your contact?”

Schneller kept his eyes on the floor, and his voice was barely audible as he answered, “I did this on my own. I always work alone.”

“But why?” asked Sara. “I don’t understand what you were doing here. Did it have anything to do with a rocket? We know a lot about that, Lemko. Or would you prefer Schneller?”

Schneller looked up at her, and there was a wry smile on his face. “Like I said, I work alone. And I like it.” Then he continued, “I’ll be safe in jail.”

“Safe from what?” asked Sara.

“People like you,” he said as he looked up at her. “You people from the NSS are always the same. I’ll be safe in jail.”

“I’m not from the NSS,” said Sara, “I work for the National Bureau of Investigation in Stockholm. Just an ordinary investigator. No spooks here.”

“There will be,” he sighed.

Before Sara could answer, the door to the search room opened and Ekman walked in, accompanied by two uniformed SWATs. Ekman looked at Sara, shook his head, and inspected the handcuffs restraining Schneller.

“I thought you were told to leave this case to us,” said Ekman.

“Yes,” Sara said, “I was, and I did. I just happened to be here when this murderer tried to escape to Germany on the ferry.”

“I’ll speak to you in Stockholm,” said Ekman, and then she was left alone in the room. Sara went out to watch them escort Schneller to one of the unmarked black cars outside, and she looked around for Hurtree. She returned to her car and found him explaining in English to a traffic warden why Sara’s car shouldn’t be ticketed.

Sara took over with the traffic warden and Hurtree was talking to someone on his cell phone when she got into the car.

“Yeah, buddy, like I said, Schneller just got banged up. My good friend here, Sara, caught him. You should’ve been here, Charlie, it was just like the old days. Got my blood pumpin’. What? Uh-huh, OK, no, no, I haven’t heard anything about that, sorry. Maybe you oughta talk to your spooky friends up here – I’m getting zilch from everyone, as usual. Yeah, great. Bye.”

Hurtree turned to Sara as she was backing out onto the street. She moved the car to a parking place where they could discuss where he wanted to go now.

“Sara, I just heard something that might be the reason behind Schneller’s mission, something you haven’t been telling me.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Sara said.

“Does the name Shkval mean anything to you?” he asked.

Sara had never been able to lie and she knew it, something which probably kept her a little more honest than others. Her face always tattled and her voice started to warble as the lie left her lips, so she had to think quickly – how to answer without lying? “What could that possibly mean?” she asked as her mind went into overdrive.

Hurtree looked at her, his eyes probing. “Shkval,” he said. “There’s something that links Schneller to a Shkval. And you don’t know what that is?”

Chapter 16

Sara turned to Hurtree. “OK, this Shkval thing is going to come out anyway. I just found out something recently and when I told Ekman about it my whole case ended up on his desk. That’s all I know about it,” she said.

“Well, I always wanted to get my hands on one of those babies. It could be one of them is out on the open market. Looks like someone stole one from the submarine base in Paldiski in Estonia last year. My guys managed to follow it as far as watching it being loaded onto the MS Sally in Tallinn, which sank on its way to Stockholm. Since then it’s just gone up in smoke.”

“I think maybe my murder victim had something to do with it. He had a manual for it in his house,” said Sara, “but I don’t know any more and I’m pretty certain I shouldn’t even tell you that much.”

“Yeah, well don’t tell me anything that will get you into trouble. I have some background information on the Shkval if you need it, but now that Schneller’s involved, Ekman will be taking over and neither of us will ever get to know anything.” Hurtree swirled his hand in his duffel bag, and it emerged holding two candy bars. “Breakfast?” he asked. “I’ve still got a bunch left.”

“Breakfast is a good idea, but your candy bars can wait,” Sara said, and she pulled in at a parking place outside a café close to the ferry terminal. “I have to get my adrenaline back in line, and maybe you can help me figure out what just happened.”

They ordered ham and cheese sandwiches with coffee for Hurtree and tea for Sara, then sat down at a simple Formica table near the window. The place was empty except for them and the man behind the counter, an immigrant from the Middle East.

“We got him,” Sara said as they waited for their food to arrive, her feelings bubbling up like the fizz in a soft drink. “And thank you, thank you for your help. I still don’t know how you knew where we should park. How did you know the road where we parked would give us the view we needed?”

“Google Maps,” said Hurtree. “Best invention in the world. If Hitler had had Google Maps we’d all be speaking German.”

“I’ll remember to tell Ekman when I see him, and believe me, he’ll ask.”

“I wonder what’ll happen to Schneller?” said Hurtree. “Do you think the NSS will prosecute him?”

“He confessed to murder when we sat in the search room,” said Sara. “That has to be worth something.”

“Yeah, good thing you had someone else there as a witness,” said Hurtree, smiling his weird smile.

“I sent her out,” Sara said. “No wonder he confessed so quickly. But he did tell me he didn’t know anything about Spimler. That’s something at least.”

“Is it?” asked Hurtree. “Did he tell you why he killed your victim?”

“He said…,” Sara stopped for a second, the answer reeling through her head again as she spoke. “He said he did it because he liked it. Even the torture. And he said something about killing him so that he wouldn’t speak to anyone else.”

“Yeah, that sounds like Schneller,” said Hurtree. “Tomorrow you’ll wonder if you even spoke to him at all. I wonder if he uses hypnosis on his interrogators? He used to work for Markus Wolf, you know. The head of Stasi in East Germany.”

“I’ve heard the name. I think I saw something about him on TV, but they didn’t do anything up here.”

“Oh no, Sara. Hell no,” said Hurtree. “Nothing ever happens up here.”

“No, I’m serious. There might have been one or two spies through the years, but no one who ever did anything terrible. Anyway, I don’t know very much about them, as long as they don’t murder people.”

“Right,” said Hurtree. “At your age you get to believe everything you’ve ever been told.”

Sara winced, stared into her tea cup while he continued, “Schneller isn’t just a spy. Think of him as the world champion of spies, the king of spies, the most dangerous person you’ve ever met.”

Sara looked at the menu as if it would provide her with the answers she sought. “So I get to catch the top spy in the world. And I’m certain my boss is already pissed off at me because of it. What made this such a bad day? And what about this Shkval?” Sara asked, hoping to get a little background from him.

“Oh yeah, that. Well, we couldn’t find it after the Sally went down. We just assumed the Russians got it because they were operating a tracked submersible there just after the ship sank. Now they’re asking us if we found it, and then they want to do a trade for one of our guys that went to jail trying to smuggle one of these torpedoes out of Russia a few years ago. So the sum of the story is, the guy who stole it doesn’t have it, and the man who bought it from him doesn’t have it, because our info indicates Schneller was hired by him to find it. We don’t have it, the Russians don’t have it, and right now I’d guess there are a lot of people out there quaking in their boots, worried that the person who does have it might use it,” said Hurtree. “It’s not the kind of ordnance you want showing up at a garage sale. Let’s hope no one makes a flagpole out of it. Do you know if it was an armed version? Some of them were tipped with nuclear warheads, you know.”

“No,” said Sara, and the word ‘nuclear’ made her focus even more. “But wouldn’t a nuclear-tipped torpedo defeat the purpose? Wouldn’t it destroy the submarine that used it too?”

“Yeah, that’s what everyone thought way back in the good old days. Then someone figured out you could use them as a sort of coastal defence weapon, just shoot them at attacking ships. Or…,” Hurtree waggled his fingers to the guy behind the counter for another cup of coffee. “Tea? No? Or, you could use them to shoot at ships in waters where you could control a narrow strait, just like the one outside.” And he motioned towards Denmark. “Or the Straits of Hormuz.”

The waiter brought the coffee and gave Hurtree a strange look as he placed it in front of him. Sara said, “I think we’d probably better wait for the rest of this conversation in the car. By the way, where do you want to go? Are you going back to the States now that you’ve identified Schneller for whoever it was that wanted him ID’d? Should I take you to the airport, train station or are you going to walk?”

“Let’s walk to the car,” said Hurtree.

*

It was going to be a fantastic day in Trelleborg, one of those freak late-autumn days that almost felt like summer. The slanting rays of the sun began to warm them both, and there was no wind. They stopped to watch the ferry to Germany as it left the harbour, leaving behind wisps of black diesel smoke from the smoke stacks topside. On board were a number of tourists who would have a great story to tell when they arrived: “Some kind of pervert caught in the women’s toilet. Only in Sweden, of course.”

“Schneller did say something more,” Sara said as they got into her car. “He said he’d be safer in jail. He seemed to be afraid of someone.”

“That must mean whoever gave him the contract is unhappy for some reason. It can’t be because of the killing, since he already did that. It must have something to do with the Shkval.”

“Hoffberg had the manual, maybe that’s what the killer was looking for,” said Sara.

“Maybe it was Hoffberg who had the Shkval, and that’s what Schneller, or Lemko or whatever we should call him, was asking about,” said Hurtree.

“It’s hard to say, but even if Hoffberg had it, he didn’t tell Lemko about it. Lemko definitely said Hoffberg didn’t tell him anything, that he killed him so that he wouldn’t be able to tell anyone else either. Actually, that would make sense. If Lemko thought Hoffberg had the Shkval then maybe he thought he could find it in some other way.”

“Don’t count on anything Schneller told you being the truth. Who was this Hoffberg guy? What kind of person was he?” asked Hurtree. They were still sitting parked in the car, the low autumn sun getting in their eyes.

“He was an ex-MP, a Member of Parliament. Sat on the Defence Committee until he quit a year or so back. Seemed to have had some difficulties working with others. Very determined person, I’d say.”

“What the hell would he be doing with a Shkval? Or even a manual for one?” asked Hurtree, shaking his head back and forth.

“What would anyone do with such a weapon?” asked Sara.

“Maybe he was trying to change the world. That seems to be what people are trying to do today. Some use politics, like your victim – Hoffberg, was it? Others use weapons, like Al-Qaida.”

“Maybe Hoffberg was getting tired of politics.”

“Well, it cost him his life if that’s true. I wonder what happened to the torpedo?”

“Yeah, it makes you wonder. And you still haven’t told me where you want to go.”

“Somewhere far away from wherever that Shkval is,” said Hurtree. “Very far away.”

*

The building that housed the Swedish Foreign Office was in the centre of Stockholm, a palace designed more than a hundred years ago; a place where regents waiting to inherit the Swedish throne could live in regal comfort while waiting for the job. It was an elegant building, with simple lines, overlooking the Royal Castle across the small bay and with a view of the opera house on the other side of the square.

Its location made it convenient for Niklas Shoreman when he wished to see one of the latest operas, this evening a version of Verdi’s Aida. It also made it an excellent place to meet with the Russian ambassador, and Niklas Shoreman was waiting impatiently for the Ambassador to join him at the wine bar between acts three and four.

“Niklas,” said the Russian ambassador, “what do you think of the singing?”

“It’s better than the costumes,” said Shoreman. “Ambassador, I just heard Schneller will be given the part of Radames soon.”

The Ambassador’s smile froze, and he focused on Shoreman as he said, “If that’s true then we should be able to deal with the issue of the fish.”

“Yes, we’ll have to see how to deal with this when it surfaces.”

The crowd milling around the small table where they stood included students in jeans and elegant couples dressed to attract attention. The Ambassador looked away for a minute. When he felt there were no prying ears nearby, he said, “Perhaps Magdalena should play the part of Aida.”

“Only Schneller knows who she is,” said Shoreman. “Unless you know something which might help.”

“No, Niklas. I’m sorry. We diplomats only get to talk, you know that. And no one’s talking about Magdalena. Schneller is the only who can call her in.”

“I just hope we can avoid Aida’s fate,” said Niklas Shoreman.

Chapter 17

Sara was still driving Hurtree back to Stockholm. They were both exhausted by the lack of sleep and the excitement of capturing Lemko, or was it Schneller? Sara kept asking Hurtree questions to keep herself awake.

“So where is Spimler?” she asked. “We solved Hoffberg’s murder, but there’s still no sign of his friend. Maybe Lemko got to him too.”

Hurtree’s opened his eyes again and asked her to repeat the question, then he answered, “If Schneller got to Spimler he probably would’ve told you. It’s strange, but it sounds to me as if he was trying to get himself put in jail.”

“Yeah, I had the same feeling,” she said. “Especially that part about being safer in jail.”

“Well,” said Hurtree, “if Schneller wanted to be in jail then it’s probably because he’s worried his client will find out he hasn’t fulfilled his end of the contract. So what would that be? He managed to off Hoffberg, so that can’t be it. What would make him so afraid he’d be glad to be put into jail?”

“Maybe he couldn’t find the rocket,” said Sara, and it felt as if a line began to connect points of light inside her brain. She blinked again, and could see an approaching car in the rainy, black distance. “Shit, I’m tired,” she said finally. “I hope we can make it to Stockholm.”

“Maybe if you turn down the heat a little we’ll be able to stay awake long enough to survive the trip,” said Hurtree, and he offered her another bar of Danish chocolate. He munched as he spoke. “Sara, it isn’t a rocket. It’s a torpedo, a very fast one, and it has to be somewhere – Schneller must’ve been trying to find out where. That’s probably what his mission was. That’s what he failed at. That’s why he’s scared of being on the loose.”

“What should we call him? Schneller? Lemko? Do you think Schneller will talk to Ekman at the NSS? I mean, if he knows something, but didn’t tell me, do you think he’ll tell Ekman?” asked Sara.

“I doubt it,” said Hurtree. “Schneller isn’t the kind of person who reveals anything he doesn’t have to. He’ll admit to murder to gain control of the moment, but he won’t give away anything more than he has to. Not Schneller.”

“Maybe Spimler ran off with the torpedo,” she said. “Maybe that’s why we can’t find him or the weapon. If we could just find Spimler I’m sure we’ll find the torpedo.”

“You know,” said Hurtree, “sometimes when I was still working I found that backtracking the whole crime scene would help me to get some new perspective. Sometimes I could figure out what was going on just by getting as close to the victims and the bad guys as I could.”

“Yeah, we do that,” said Sara. “We call it criminal analysis, and we do a lot of it.”

“Of course you do, but that’s not what I meant,” said Hurtree. “What I meant is, if I was working on some violent crime where drugs were involved, I’d try to backtrack the drug deal too, if I could. The dealers, their homes, friends, enemies.”

“Sounds like Criminal Investigation for Dummies to me,” Sara said. “Like I said, we do that. So what’s new?”

“Nothing, but in this case it might help to go to the place where the torpedo was originally stolen, not just where it might have ended up. Wasn’t that in Estonia?”

“How come you know so much about it?” asked Sara.

Hurtree yawned a reply. “Sorry, all out of Danish chocolate, Sara. How many more hours is it to Stockholm? I’m ready to pass out.”

“Only another hour,” Sara said. “Do you have a hotel in Stockholm?”

“No,” said Hurtree, “I’ll sleep on a park bench.”

“Sure,” she said, “and you’ll be an ice statue by morning. You can crawl into the back seat as soon as we arrive. In the meantime you can help to keep me awake, otherwise you’ll wake up in a room in the hospital, if at all.”

They continued like that for the rest of the drive, Sara almost fainting with exhaustion and Hurtree snoring sometimes, then jerking himself upright when the noise woke him up. Sara got her second wind about half an hour out of Stockholm by opening the windows to let in the freezing night air, and she started to teach Hurtree some Swedish drinking songs. He taught her some of the German songs he remembered from his days in Munich.

By the time she pulled into the parking garage in the basement below her flat they were both giddy and frozen. She let Hurtree come up to her flat to use the toilet and brush his teeth.

She gave him two blankets. “OK, John, we’ll skip the car this time. I’ll let you sleep on the floor. Wake up before I do and you can make breakfast with what you find. Bang on the bedroom door until I return from the dead.”

He mumbled something about being flattered, took the blankets, and she could hear him snoring before she got into her own bed. It would be easy to get to sleep tonight.

*

Sara didn’t know what woke her first, Hurtree’s banging on her door or the telephone call from work. She got a robe, and at the same time answered her boss’ irritated voice on the other end.

“What the hell are you doing?” asked Sven, and then continued before Sara could answer. “You’ve just got me into a lot of trouble with the NSS, who are happy you helped to catch Lemko, but enraged you almost lost him. I think you’d better get in here to explain yourself, before I make your day off a permanent leave of absence.”

“Yes, boss,” said Sara, hoping that Hurtree would free up the toilet in a hurry. She pounded on the door, and said in a hoarse whisper, “Please.”

“Please what?” asked Sven.

“Nothing. I’ll be pleased to explain what happened and I’ll be there soon. And I think Ekman may be exaggerating a little about me being the cause of Lemko’s attempt to escape. I was there, I saw what happened. See you soon.”

Sara dropped the phone as she saw the door to the toilet opening. “Please fix us some breakfast. You’ll find everything where it should be,” she said through the door as she finally got a chance to free up some space in her bladder.

Guys must have it a lot easier. They can just tie it up in a knot if they can’t find any other way to hold it.

*

“I have to go into the office,” Sara said when she entered the kitchen. She gazed in amazement at the spread Hurtree had prepared. He’d found every piece of food in her tiny pantry, and the table looked like a luxury hotel breakfast. “Wow,” she said, “I didn’t know I had that much to eat. Help yourself, I never eat anything more than a cracker with a slice of cheese on it.”

“It was all that chocolate yesterday,” said Hurtree. “It always seems to take away my hunger pangs until the next day, and then I’m starved. Is your boss after your head?”

“Yeah, and then some. According to Ekman I was the reason Lemko tried to leave the house, so the NSS have made themselves out to be heroes.”

“Nice bunch of colleagues.”

Sara fixed her simple breakfast and began to organise her defence for the meeting with Sven. She’d do a chronological summary; just tell him everything exactly as it went down. As a last resort she could use Hurtree as a witness if necessary, although she hoped she could keep him out of the picture.

“So what’s your plan, John? Going back to the States today?”

“Not quite yet. I’m probably going to book a hotel for when I get back from my little excursion. I thought I’d do a little backtracking on my own, unless you want to come along.”

“Does that mean Estonia?”

“Yes, and from what I’ve heard, a little town called Paldiski,” said Hurtree. “Maybe that’s where Spimler is.”

“It might be a good place to begin. I know I won’t be able to go there, that’s for sure. I wonder if Ekman will get anything out of Lemko?”

*

Ekman was looking across the table at the man Sara had captured the day before. He’d begun the interrogation without speaking to her, even though he knew she must have been able to glean something from him before the NSS arrived at the ferry terminal.

“We need to get something straight right from the beginning,” said Ekman. “We’re going to need a name for you – a real name, not an alias or a codename, like Schneller. So what’s your real name?”

“I don’t know if I even remember the name I was given at birth. It doesn’t matter anyway. I’ll do time as Lemko, and you have all those details, so just call me Lemko.”

Ekman stared at him for several minutes. Both men were used to waiting for the other to break the silence, so it would have been lunchtime before anyone spoke if it hadn’t been for Lemko’s smile. It had always been successful before, every time he needed to break a silence without giving in; the charm-school approach, Markus Wolf had called it. Throw them off guard and you’ll get them to move before you have to, and the chess game is on. Ekman recognised the attempt, and decided on a counter-move; he pretended to lose the initiative to lure Lemko into feeling secure for a moment.

“Was breakfast OK this morning? Can I get you something? Another cup of coffee?”

“I only drink tea,” said Lemko, “green tea. It’s better for my health. You should drink it instead of coffee. You’ll live longer.”

“Yeah. Yes, you’re right. I’ll get us both some green tea,” and Ekman motioned to the officer behind the two-way mirror.

“Now let’s get back to work,” said Ekman after the tea had arrived. “Where were we?”

“Call me Lemko, that’ll have to do.”

“OK, your name isn’t important. What I need to know is your connection to a murder case west of Stockholm. A man called Leo Hoffberg.”

“Oh, I did that. I already confessed to your other officer, the woman who got me at the ferry terminal. Nice-looking lady. Too bad she’s so adept at judo holds.”

“Really? What I need to know now is why.”

“No reason. It was just that time of day. It made me feel good. It doesn’t matter.”

“No,” said Ekman, “doesn’t matter to me either. I’m only interested in knowing what you were doing in the Stockholm area.”

Lemko hesitated a minute, changing his mind about the answer in the middle of the sentence. “I…I was…I was just there. No reason. Being a tourist. You know. Saw the house, got the urge. He answered the door and I shot him. End of story. You can lock me up.”

“No,” said Ekman, “I can’t.”

This wasn’t the answer Lemko had expected, and for the first time since he’d been apprehended he felt a real shaft of fear tear through his mind. “Can’t? Can’t what?”

“I can’t lock you up.”

“What? Are you just going to let me go? I just told you I murdered a man. You have to.”

“No. I don’t have to. And I don’t have to let you go either.”

“What do you mean?” For the first time Lemko asked a question which he couldn’t answer himself.

“I think you know what it means. You used to work for Markus Wolf. Use your imagination. What would he have done in my shoes?”

“I don’t know. Ask him yourself, he’s still alive. A consultant, from what I hear.”

“Just use your imagination,” said Ekman.

“You can’t do that. This isn’t East Germany. This is Sweden. You have to play by the rules here.”

“Do I?” Ekman leaned forward and smiled. “Who told you that? I can do whatever I want with you. How could I do anything wrong to a person who doesn’t exist?”

“Suppose that I help you with something? Would that make you more inclined to make me exist? I might be able to tell you a few things you don’t already know. Things about the past.”

“For instance?” Ekman stared.

“Like, there were at least two members of your Parliament who were informers to Stasi.”

“Yes.” Ekman moved his head from side to side. “We know. We know who they were too. Old news. Not interesting enough. Your boss Markus Wolf already told us that.”

“I ran Magdalena,” said Schneller. “I was her handler, you know – she was my informant.”

“So you know who she is?” asked Ekman, showing interest for the first time.

“I never got to know her real name, just where she worked. We always met outside her job. She worked in the Parliament Building – some kind of information specialist who worked in the archives. Nice-looking girl. I recruited her after the Red Army Fraction attack on the West German Embassy.”

“Yes?”

“That’s all. She gave me lots of pertinent information on things like disarmament positions, military data, all kinds of things we needed to know at the time. She was great at what she did, until she got married and stopped working there. After that I never heard from her again.”

“Yes?”

“That’s all,” said Lemko.

“Was she involved in the murder?” asked Ekman.

“No. Like I said, I just did it for the hell of it. It felt good.”

“Then you’re back to where you began,” said Ekman as he put his pen back into his shirt pocket. “Like you said, that’s all. Unless you can tell me something about someone in Estonia. Someone from Tallinn? Or Paldiski?”

“Paldiski?” asked Lemko. “I’ve never been to Paldiski.”

“OK, then begin with Tallinn,” said Ekman. “Your business associate there will do. We know you have one, we know when you were there last, and we know who your two Swedish customers were. So tell me something I don’t know if you want to keep me amused. Believe me, you want to keep me amused.”

Lemko suddenly felt the conflict of two identities, a combined unit of fear in a paradox between two alternatives which both gave the same result. If he told Ekman what he wanted to know, his future would be very much shorter than he’d imagined for himself, and yet, if he said nothing he’d be transported to Estonia and left at the mercy of a client who would wonder why he’d been released so quickly. He felt like he was balancing on a razor, and he didn’t like either option available to him. The simplest exit would be to say nothing, and try to fashion an escape route when the time came.

“I can’t remember anything about Tallinn. Or Paldiski. Maybe I’ve never been there at all.”

“I might be able to arrange that,” said Ekman as he left the interrogation room. “They tell me that some parts of it look like East Germany used to look like. You’d probably feel right at home. If you get time to feel at home.”

*

Sara had left Hurtree in her flat when she went to work, and he cleaned up her kitchen before he left, making sure the door was locked after him. He’d booked a cabin on the MS Romantika, a cruise ship servicing the ports of Stockholm and Tallinn. He had plenty of time before the ship left at 6 pm, and he took a bus to the eastern part of Stockholm to visit the Vasa Museum again.

He’d already seen the royal warship which capsized on its maiden voyage after only three miles in 1628, but the museum was so fascinating he took the chance to see it again. He stared at the ship, amazed so much had been spared the tooth of time in the icy waters of the Baltic. It seemed incredible it had been able to sail at all, designed with an afterdeck sticking up like some kind of wooden sail, overloaded with cannons upsetting the balance so necessary to keep it afloat.

On the way out he found the sign showing the way to a memorial for victims of the MS Sally tragedy, and he walked along the asphalt path until he reached it, a black, circular wall over seven feet high, with over eight hundred names inscribed on it. Hurtree noticed there were flowers placed in front of some of the names, and he went back to the kiosk at the museum, bought some flowers and returned. He searched for a minute and then placed them below the name he’d found, a typical English name, the name Captain Peters had mentioned to him during his visit to Munich: the name of the CID agent who had perished on the night the MS Sally went down. Hurtree stood looking out over the grey water of the bay in front of him. The three flags of the nations which had erected the memorial snapped in the brisk breeze and promised a chilly and choppy voyage. Peters hadn’t told him any details about the night of the sinking, just the name of the soldier who had gone down with the ship. He turned on his cell phone and checked in before leaving the memorial.

“Hello, Charlie, this is your ex officio agent Hurtree reporting in. Just thought I’d call and hassle your ass.”

“What’re you up to?” asked Peters.

“Isn’t that a funny question?” said Hurtree. “I guess you thought I’d never figure out why I was sent up here, or that I might find out about the Rocketfish. I guess you have some explaining to do when we meet up next time. Anyway, I’m standing in front of the memorial to the victims of the MS Sally’s sinking, and I put a couple of flowers near your agent’s name. Hope you don’t mind.”

“Were my flowers still there?” asked Peters.

“No, not in front of his name anyway. They probably clean them up every day. Anyway, I put some flowers there. It’s not every day a CID agent gets his name written in stone.”

“No,” said Peters, “thank God for that. We kept his name off the passenger list when they made it public, but I wanted his name on the memorial. Have you been able to locate the Rocketfish?”

“Oh hell, yes. I shipped it to you yesterday. Collect with Fed Ex,” said Hurtree.

“That sounds like news good enough to get drunk on,” said Captain Peters. “So what are your plans now?”

“I’ve never been to Estonia, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to take a micro-break on my mini-holiday. Assuming you don’t have anything against that.”

“Would what I thought make any difference?” asked Peters.

“No, none whatsoever.”

“Estonia. Any place in particular?”

“I thought Paldiski would be a good place to visit this time of year,” said Hurtree.

“Well you’re old enough to die of natural causes, but if you survive going to Paldiski you’ll probably live forever. I won’t give you any advice except to be careful. That town is probably the most dangerous place in Europe today. Let’s keep your name off the wall.”

“Yes, Papa.”

“I mean it, John, keep your back to the wall.”

“I always do, it’s the only way I can keep standing up.” Hurtree said goodbye and made his way back to the bus station.

Chapter 18

Hurtree was awed by Stockholm’s public transportation infrastructure, the system of buses, trams, trains and the underground making travel on public transportation from any point in the city to another not only possible, but fast and cheap. He caught sight of the ship’s funnels sticking up over the tops of the trees soon after he exited the long tunnel from Gärdet’s underground station and he joined a train of tourists, lemmings dragging their luggage to the MS Romantika, all chirping in high spirits to the low, drumming sound of suitcase wheels on the asphalt.

Hurtree collected his ticket and meal vouchers from the ticket booth before he went on board. His cabin was on deck two, well below the waterline, and as the ship began its departure from the harbour he also discovered he was far too close to the side-thrusters, the propellers used to move the ship sideways during docking procedures. The noise was calamitous and he wondered if he’d be able to sleep. The cabins on both sides of him were filled with young Swedish students who were taking time off from their university classes, four young women on one side and four young men on the other.

Within minutes Hurtree was involved in a conversation with the young men, who kindly filled him in on the cheapest way to eat on board and the waiting time before the ship’s tax-free shop opened. They also told him he should be careful of the Russian women on board, since many of them were HIV-positive prostitutes. He asked them if they knew anything about the sinking of the MS Sally and their cheerful banter suddenly stopped.

“We’ll be passing right by it,” said one of the students. “I’ll show you where it’s at if you want to look.”

“I’m not sure that I do,” said Hurtree. “I just wondered if you guys knew anything about what happened.”

“No one knows what happened,” another of the students chimed in. “The governments have all agreed to keep everything secret, so we’ll probably never know either. That’s what they do here when something embarrassing for the government has occurred: they make it a state secret.”

“Surely the government wasn’t involved in the sinking?” asked Hurtree.

“Then why did they make it a state secret?” asked one of the young men, and then, “Let’s get to the tax-free shop before everything has been sold. That, at least, is not a secret.”

Hurtree followed the young crowd to the shop, and when they returned to their cabins he helped them toast a few attempts to human understanding before going up to the restaurant for his evening meal. It was an expensive meal for Hurtree, more than double what he usually spent on food, but he’d managed to quell his lunchtime hunger pangs with a hot dog at the stand outside the Vasa Museum, and now he’d be able to eat and drink as much as he wanted at a flat-rate fee of $30. The buffet was the best he’d ever experienced, with huge amounts of high-quality food to choose from.

He started with the Baltic herring appetisers and caviar, moved on to a delicious soup, then began a plate of cold cuts before starting with an entrée of roast beef. He alternated between beer and red wine to quench his thirst and finished with a dessert plate of ice cream and cake, and hot coffee. It was far more than he was used to eating and Hurtree was a little queasy as he walked out of the restaurant.

The youngsters on both sides of his cabin were now in phase two of their party, pairing up for the night ahead. He declined an invitation for free drinks and went to bed.

At 1 am and midway in the journey, the ship docked in the Mariehamn harbour, and the side-thrusters slammed tons of water onto the thin sheets of steel plating separating the cabin wall from the tunnel where the propeller was located. The throbbing commotion woke him up with a fright, sweating and wondering if he could make it up to the waterline before the ship sank.

After several anxious seconds he recognised there was a reason for the budget-priced ticket he’d been offered and tried to go back to sleep to the whine of the propeller and the amorous groaning of the couples in the bunks on both sides of his cabin.

*

Morning came all too early for Hurtree, with a loudspeaker announcing that soon they would be docking at the port of Tallinn and it was time for him to prepare to go ashore. He had no time to lose. He had to find a train station, buy his ticket, travel the thirty miles to Paldiski and get back before the ferry left in less than eight hours. It surprised Hurtree not to find a customs officer demanding to see his passport, and he and the rest of the ship’s passengers passed from the ship to the city without any control whatsoever. He got in the queue for a taxi to the train station and had no trouble finding someone who could speak English.

Hurtree only had to wait a short while before the train left for Paldiski; he paid $2 for his ticket on board. The Russian wide-gauge tracks provided each car with room for five seats per row, including a wide aisle between them. Hurtree sat down in a car that didn’t allow dogs or smoking and began the eighty-minute trip to the end of the line; the train stopping at each of the closely-placed stations before it could achieve even half-speed. His view was obscured by streaked, grimy mud splashed with rain that soaked the chilly air outside, and a thin layer of dust on the inside of the window.

The railroad company used plenty of energy to heat up the cars, making it necessary for Hurtree to remove first his jacket, then his sweater. As the train neared Paldiski his ticket was checked by a controller, and then, close to the fence-posts marking where the mine field had once closed off the entire city from everyone except the Russian military, his ticket was checked again by a separate controller. Old habits were apparently hard to break. The last few stops were just concrete platforms next to the tracks that ran through a forest of birch trees rooted in dark, swampy earth, interrupted by stretches of grass-covered peat moss.

When the train arrived in Paldiski, the few remaining passengers got off and Hurtree watched as they got into several older Russian cars which waited for them.

Rows of grey concrete apartment buildings rose in the distance and Hurtree began to walk towards them, passing desolate, uninhabited buildings with the disembowelled parts of Russian army vehicles parked outside. The street signs were in Estonian and Russian.

Reminds me of Ireland. The national language on top and homage to the old colonial power just underneath.

Most of the buildings were unoccupied; empty shells left to rot after the military had pulled out, taking everything of value with them. The few Russians left behind had been given the opportunity to learn Estonian if they wished to be integrated into the newly founded republic. Many didn’t, becoming stateless individuals with no rights, no passports, no way to gain employment, no way to get health care; just newly defined zombies in the newly defined state that seemed to have no use for them, dangerous because there were so many of them and doubly dangerous because so many had technical military skills and no army to employ them.

Many of the cars parked in front of the decaying apartment houses were new, including several BMWs and Audis.

Looks like someone is making money off of something, thought Hurtree.

He went into the only grocery store in the town, just to get a feel for the place. As soon as he entered, the few shoppers inside looked at him and the chatter subsided immediately. No one was smiling, so he left without buying anything.

He walked back to the station house, passing a piece of corrugated metal that was used as a gate, and on which someone had painted Welcome to Hell. He continued towards the station house and went into a small café beside the tracks. A sign in front of the bar mirror told him he could order a shot of Russian vodka for less than a buck fifty, and buried behind a wall of bottles of Russian vodka he saw a bottle of Absolut, his Swedish vodka of choice. When he couldn’t make his order understood he just pointed at the bottle with the blue logotype and added a bottle of tomato juice.

The place was almost devoid of customers. Hurtree sat down across the table from a middle-aged man drinking straight vodka from a water glass. He poured a mixture of tomato juice and vodka into his own glass, then raised it in a salute to the man across the table. They began a conversation of waggling arms, drawings and German verbs. It was a bizarre way to communicate but it seemed to work.

Hurtree found out there were several trains before he would have to leave in order to catch his ferry back to Stockholm, so he decided to use the welcome that his vodka salute had given him by trying to find out if anyone in Paldiski knew of the Shkval torpedo. He wrote the word on a beer mat and passed it over to his drinking mate.

“Shkval?” asked Hurtree.

“Da, Shkval,” said his drinking mate as he pointed towards the town behind them, then gesturing the wiggling movements of a fish before throwing his arms in the air, indicating a huge explosion. “Shkval fabrik,” he said, pointing again to the town. “Shkval machen hier.” His eyes narrowed as he sipped another large swallow of vodka from his glass. “Und plutonium.”

So this was where some of the Shkvals and their warheads were manufactured. It made sense. Hurtree had heard of the military school at Paldiski, set up to train engineers to run nuclear-powered submarines. Before it closed, the school had two live reactors which manufactured plutonium as a byproduct, so the fuel to make a nuclear warhead was easy to come by. Now all that remained of that activity in Paldiski was radioactive waste and some dandelion plants with leaves that seemed way too large.

Hurtree tried to get more detail from the man across the table, asking him if he knew of a man called Spimler.

“Njet,” said his drinking companion. “Kein Spimler hier.”

“He’s a Swede.” Hurtree motioned to a bottle of Absolut vodka. “Spimler. Stockholm.”

“No Spimler.” The man began to adjust to English. “No many Swedes. Only Swede vodka.” And he laughed, displaying his toothless gums.

Hurtree filled his companion’s glass from his bottle of Swedish firewater and provided another name. “Schneller? Ever heard of a man named Schneller?”

His drinking companion looked deep into his glass and an answer seemed close to bubbling forth, but he clammed up when the café owner appeared behind the counter. It was time to leave anyway. Hurtree thanked his new drinking buddy for the company in at least three languages and narrowly managed to escape a Russian drunken hug as he left the café.

*

He got onto the train just as the doors closed, three minutes ahead of schedule, and sat down on one of the green plastic seats next to a window, alone except for the driver and the conductor. The floor of the car was grey-speckled plastic, the walls were made of blue plastic and the ceiling was yet another green colour, also in plastic. The entire train was vandal-proof and washable with a fire hose, making it easy to clean; the McDonald’s of trains.

The sun’s rays slanted in from the west as the train left Paldiski, and it would soon be dark. As the train passed the Paldiski Oil Terminal, minutes after departure, Hurtree saw surprise on the faces of a group of passengers waiting on the platform as the train failed to stop.

A few minutes later, the train pulled into Keila station, and a man whose face was nearly covered by a pair of sunglasses entered the train, being led by a large black dog on a leash. He sat down across from Hurtree and commanded his dog to sit. “Kerber, Sidetz.”

The dog sat on his haunches in the space between the other empty seats and the two men, blocking Hurtree’s exit to the aisle. The dog Kerber looked first at his master, then stared at Hurtree as he sniffed the air.

Hurtree found it uncomfortable to return the man’s blind stare, and the dog made him even more uncomfortable, so he looked out the window instead, even though there was little to look at. A multitude of birch trees flashed by, then a small, sluggish stream with water the colour of ink, then more birch trees soaking their roots in black, swampy water.

Hurtree returned his gaze to the man dressed in a blue windbreaker and a pair of dark trousers. The few grey hairs he had left had been swept forward to cover a bald spot which grew from his forehead. He smiled at Hurtree from under the sunglasses, revealing three stainless steel teeth at the front of his mouth.

“You American?” asked the blind man suddenly, and Hurtree turned away, surprised and uneasy.

“You Russian?” replied Hurtree, and he watched as the stainless steel smile widened before the response.

“Yes, I Russian,” said the man. “You like Paldiski?”

Hurtree didn’t reply at first. He examined the man in front of him, then focussed on the dog, still blocking his only route of escape.

“Not blind?” asked Hurtree.

“Oh yes, I blind. Only see what want see. Kerber, dog, has many eyes, he see all. You like Paldiski?”

“No,” said Hurtree, “but they have good vodka.”

“Russian vodka very good,” said the man. “You go Paldiski drink vodka?”

“Paldiski vodka very cheap,” said Hurtree, chopping up his grammar to match the situation.

The man smiled again. “Yes, I see. Like Paldiski torpedz,” he said. “Very cheap.”

The statement caught Hurtree by surprise, and he lurched back against the vinyl seat. “You sell torpedoes?” He scanned the train for other passengers, but they were still alone. The train flew through the next station without stopping.

“Torpedz very dangerous,” said the man. “Best not buy.” The black Labrador fixed his reddish eyes on Hurtree, panting and occasionally baring his teeth. Small drops of dog saliva began to spatter the train’s linoleum floor.

“I heard about someone who bought one, “said Hurtree, staring back at the dog, “but he lost it. Very expensive.”

“Should drink vodka before you pay,” the man said, “then you never lose. You ask man in café about Schneller. You know Schneller?”

“Yeah,” said Hurtree, suddenly aware of what was happening, “I know someone named Schneller.”

“Schneller in prison,” said the blind man. “You visit him?”

“No,” said Hurtree, “I don’t think they’d let me in to visit.”

“Hmmm,” said the man. “But you know Schneller.”

“Yeah, a long time ago.”

Stop after stop was missed, and the train remained empty except for Hurtree, the blind man and his dog.

“Dangerous, Schneller,” said the blind man. “Dangerous, Paldiski. You must be very old man, Mr American.”

“You got that right,” said Hurtree.

“You CIA man?”

“No.” Hurtree stared at the man’s dark glasses, trying to make out something he could use later in an identification.

“You talk Schneller,” said the blind man. The train slowed down and he rose to get off at the next station. “Tell him do his job or he die. My dog no like you, Mr American.”

“Tell your dog I don’t much like him either,” said Hurtree, and he watched as the man walked through the open doors of the car ahead of his dog. The dog backed his way off the train, guarding against any attack.

When the train arrived in Tallinn, the taxi that bore Hurtree to the ferry terminal fought its way through the evening rush hour. He asked the driver to stop at the café just across the street from the terminal. Hurtree looked inside to see if the Retro Café lived up to its name and the description that Captain Peters had given him. It was painted in orange and brown, colours which reminded him of the 70s in Germany. The place was empty, and he glanced at his watch. He had no time to order, so he ran across the street to the terminal. He tried to call Sara Markham but got only a busy signal. He was the last person to board and he showed his boarding pass to the guard, went through the non-existent customs and then down to his cabin in the bowels of the ferry. The party had already begun on both sides of his cabin.

It’s going to be another long night.

Sara tried to return Hurtree’s call, but the ship’s metal hull shielded his cell phone from her.

The previous day Sara had left her flat while Hurtree was still eating breakfast. She had rushed to Police Headquarters on Kungsholmen, and met Sven in the lift. He said he was just returning from a meeting with Ekman, and she followed him into his room.

“Like I said when you called, I was there when they got Lemko,” Sara said as Sven sat behind his desk, leaving her standing in front of him like some child on report to the school principal. “I’d like to explain what I saw, what I did, and let you decide if what I did was as serious as Ekman has said.”

“OK.” Sven opened a notepad and took up a pen. “So tell me.”

Sara gave him a complete description of the trip, including picking up Hurtree. She told him of their miserable, freezing stakeout, Hurtree’s observations about Schneller, his use of tunnels, disguises and his escape, including her honking the horn to attract the attention of the SWAT team and the chase that led to the ferry terminal.

Sara continued, “And then Hurtree sees something and he tells me he thinks Schneller, uh, Lemko, is in the women’s toilet, and so I go in, and then, uh, I see that he’s dressed like a woman and I tell him to stop and he tries to get away, so I—”

“Wait,” Sven interrupted, “stop a minute. Did you say you caught Lemko in the women’s toilet? I heard you were just talking to him in the customs search room.”

“Yeah, that’s where we were sitting when Ekman came in. I never got a chance to tell anyone about what happened before, until now.” Sara began to relax.

“And Hurtree was there the whole time?” asked Sven.

“Not during my questioning of Lemko. He was outside during that. I think he went down to the car to talk to a traffic warden.”

“So Hurtree could back up your story about you catching Lemko?” asked Sven.

“Back up? Wait a minute, am I the one being investigated here? I don’t think I understand.”

“You weren’t supposed to be there at all,” said Sven with a wide grin on his face, “but I’m glad you were. I’m glad Hurtree was there too, and I’m very pleased you got this case solved. I’ll take care of this with Ekman, don’t worry about it. You can talk to Cantsten and tell her she should be talking to Ekman from now on, and tell her Lemko confessed. You don’t have to give her any details about you being there, since you weren’t, officially. By the way, you should write some kind of report describing what you just told me, but give it a touristy twist, if you know what I mean.”

“What about Spimler? He’s still missing, and there was a clear connection to Hoffberg. What should we do about that?”

“Let Ekman take care of it,” said Sven, and he clapped his hands as his smile widened. “For us, case closed.”

*

When Sara got to the Hoffberg room, Robert was already clearing it up. Sara shook her head as she saw him putting the last of the files into a cardboard moving box.

“So where’s the joy in solving this case?” she asked. “It feels like cleaning up after a mess I made when I was a kid. I used to try, but cleaning it up only smeared it around more than before. When I was done, I had a half-dirty cleaning rag and a half-dirty floor.”

“Don’t worry,” said Robert. “There’re two of us, so I’ll get the other half. And anyway, you got the case solved, even if Ekman gets to take all the credit.”

“Only halfway,” said Sara. “We still didn’t find Spimler. And I have this feeling he’s important.”

“He might still be in the water,” said Robert. “You asked me to track back to where his boat drifted from. I did that, and I know where it is, at least within a close margin of error.”

“You do?” asked Sara, and she could hear her voice change. She knew that she shouldn’t, but she had to ask. “You don’t suppose you could tell me where that would be?”

“I already put a copy on your desk,” said Robert, and he seemed to rise two inches in stature. “I knew you’d want to see it as soon as you came in. Even before I heard about Lemko’s capture.” He grinned his twelve-year-old-kid grin, someone who just got to do something naughty. “And of course, I’ve included the original in the box that I’ll be sending to Ekman sometime this afternoon. Way down on the bottom of the pile.”

*

The coordinates which Robert had received from the weather service were marked as a dot on a map of Stockholm city, surrounded by an ellipse indicating the margin of error owing to possible changes in the wind and current on the day of Spimler’s disappearance. It was only ten o’clock in the morning and Sara knew the patrol officer she’d met out at Hoffberg’s house would be munching his daily doughnut right about then.

“Hi, Burger, it’s Sara Markham, from the Hoffberg case, remember?”

She was right. She could hear him swallowing a gulp of cop-fuel as he answered, and yeah, he’d be able to pick her up with his boat in less than an hour. He was nearby and he’d be happy to contribute to closing the case. He was already on the way to pick her up at the dock on the harbour side of City Hall.

Sara had to walk through a crowd of newlywed couples. Their friends and relatives had just helped them officiate a Swedish civil wedding, a simple signing of a register and the payment of a fee, the first in a coming story of insolent, penalising taxation of married couples. It was a memorable day to be married, their clothes flapping like sails in the brisk air, their happiness turning to grimaces as they tried to digitalise their freezing moment for eternity. One of the couples had hired a Scottish exchange student to play bagpipes and his knees were beginning to turn blue in the cold.

Sara made her way down to the steps leading to the water, and waited for the police boat approaching from the distance, blue light flashing and siren warning other vessels to heave to. She boarded with a little difficulty as the choppy waters tossed the boat up and down, then they departed. After a few minutes they were slowing down, and they both watched the GPS readout on the screen.

“It’s here,” said Burger into the wind. “Your coordinates indicate Spimler’s boat started drifting somewhere around here.”

“OK,” Sara shouted back. “Is there any chance we could get a look at the bottom? I’m looking for a body. And there might be a long object too, sort of like a piece of pipe about eight yards long.”

Burger smiled, blinked his eyes against the spray and began flipping some switches. Within a minute the screen in front of them changed its view, and the GPS map became a blue screen with occasional black objects flitting out of focus.

“Fish,” shouted Burger into the wind. “This is a fish-finder. We could get lucky and be able to find an object on the bottom. It’s sort of like radar, though: you can see something, but you don’t always know what it is.”

As he said that, Sara saw a long silhouette appear, with an outgrowth at one end, resembling a cherry stuck to a chopstick.

“There. What’s that?” she asked.

“It’s a piece of pipe with something stuck to it,” said Burger. “Or maybe a shark with someone sticking out of its mouth. I suppose you want me to dive and check it out?”

Sara didn’t have to answer. Burger threw out an anchor and was putting on a wetsuit before could she turn away, and she caught a glimpse of his beer-belly as he took off his shirt.

“This is my built-in air bag,” he said, slapping the jelly blob. “I know what you’re thinking, and yeah, I should work out more, but I have some very strong habits. And most of them are bad for me.”

Burger dropped into the water beside the boat after throwing out a red and white diver’s flag. His head appeared on the surface after only a few minutes and he spluttered, waves filling his mouth between phrases “There’s a dead man, a diver pinned down by a long green thing down there. Never seen anything like it before – looks like a rocket. There’re some markings on it. Think it was some Cyrillic letters followed by 111, something like that. It’s pointed right at the Parliament Building.”

Sara used her left hand to call while her right hand was helping the officer into the boat.

Sven answered from the room where they always drank coffee in the afternoon. “Yeah, Sara, where are you?”

“I’m in a police patrol boat. Centre of the city, just east of Långholmen. I think I’ve found Spimler, and the torpedo. I’m looking straight at the Parliament Building.”

“Stay put,” replied Sven, and ended the call without another word.

They didn’t have to wait long for company. By the time the maritime officer had dried off and was clothed again there was a helicopter buzzing above them. Sara’s phone beeped with a message telling her she’d just missed a phone call from Hurtree, and she tried to call back but the call failed. She was shivering, and she didn’t know if it was from the cold, or the fear of what they’d just found.

Part 3

Chapter 19

The centre of Stockholm between the fungal end of autumn in September and the crisp smell of ice in January. October was a leafless month. The wind blew around bared branches and houses built of stone. It carried the memory of autumn one day, and was bitterly cold on the next. Today the wind came off the North Pole, and brought the touch of a rasp which chafed Sara’s nose red as she and the officer sat in his patrol boat. They hunkered against the cold and spray, following their orders to stay put.

The blue and white police helicopter circling over their heads called attention to their position. Sara could see people on shore pointing to them as they bobbed on the windswept water.

Sara’s cell phone bleeped, and she answered Sven’s call.

“I need you back here. There’s another patrol boat on the way towards your position. When it gets there I want you to show them the location of the body and then I want you to have the officer take you to the landing at City Hall. Tell the patrol boat officer to get back to the crime scene after he’s let you off and have him set up a perimeter with the other boat. There’ll be a patrol car waiting for you outside City Hall. Get here before the blue lights have begun to flash.” He hung up before she could respond.

When Sara got back to the Police Building she barely had time to take off her jacket before Sven called her into his room.

“At it again, I see,” he said.

“Sorry, boss, I didn’t know I’d find a body out there, and certainly not some kind of torpedo.” It was already dark outside, and the single desk lamp Sven had turned on left most of his body unlit. She couldn’t see whether he was being ironic or serious. “Am I in trouble again?”

“No. At least not with me. You were supposed to be working on another case already, so I guess you’ll have to explain to me what the hell you were doing out there. But let’s leave that until later, when we have more time to make up a credible story. Right now I want to be informed firsthand about what you saw.”

“I didn’t see anything myself. It was the patrol boat officer that dove. He found the body of a diver trapped under a long green cylinder, marked with Russian lettering and 111. From what we’ve learned about Spimler and what I could see from the manual found in his house I put two and two together and, well, that’s about it. Boss, it’s kind of scary. That thing out there might be something dangerous.”

“You’re right.” Sven’s voice was now stern. “It is.”

“Then shouldn’t we be informing a bunch of agencies and the public?”

“We have to know what it is we’re dealing with first. You can’t tell the public something which will send them into a dizzy tailspin unless it benefits them. Right now we don’t have enough facts. So get back to your desk and start giving me something more to work with on your new case. No, wait. Call Spimler’s wife. Maybe she can recognise some of the diving equipment.”

“Thanks, boss, I knew you’d find something nice for me to do.”

Sven followed Sara out of his room and she saw him stressed for the first time ever. Ekman had just come over from the NSS and had taken over everything. Sven caught him in the middle of an instruction to one of the officers who happened to be passing by in the corridor, and he said, “Ekman, let’s talk. Now.”

Both men went back into Sven’s room.

“We’ve got to get some help on this,” said Sven. “The military has to get involved if we’ve found what we think we’ve found, and I don’t think there’s time for the normal bureaucratic round of meetings.”

“I agree,” said Ekman, and he started a call to the Chief of the Navy. It took several minutes for the connection to be made, and during that time Ekman and Sven put a large map of Stockholm on the table in front of them. Sven used his pen to mark the spot where the patrol boat had been anchored. “It’s here,” he said to Ekman. “Should we empty the city? How many people can we get out? Where should we put them?”

“Let’s talk to the military first,” said Ekman, still holding the phone to his ear. “It’s important not to panic. We can use their expertise to give us an idea of what kind of threat we’re – yes. Hello, Admiral. It’s Lars Ekman at the NSS. I don’t have time for niceties. We have an emergency situation, and we need your help immediately.”

Ekman explained briefly what they knew, and he began to answer the Admiral’s questions. “Yes, it’s in the middle of the city. Yes, Stockholm. I haven’t been able to verify it yet, but our best intel indicates a Soviet Shkval torpedo, a VA-111. I don’t know if it’s armed. We only have a report that it bears the markings of a Shkval. No, Admiral, I’m not sure if the Prime Minister has been available for contact yet.”

Ekman looked at Sven, who shook his head. “No, we’ve sent messages, but we have no confirmation that he’s received them yet. We have two police patrol boats at the site, keeping other boats away. There’s also a police helicopter over the site, providing us with real-time images from their on-board video camera…Yes, I’m sure we can patch that over to you. Just give us the technical details. Yes, Admiral, I agree. We’ll keep our equipment there until your men arrive. How long will it take to get the Combat Boat 90 to the scene? OK, Admiral, we’ll keep our men there until it arrives.”

Ekman’s eyes rolled towards the ceiling as he waited for the Admiral to finish his rant. “Admiral, we’re creating a lot of attention with all this hardware in the centre of the city. What do we tell the press? OK, I’ll get someone to create a press release which will cover it until we have a better handle on the situation. What about evacuation? According to the procedures in the new Emergency Situations Manual, we have to consider evacuation. Do you know how much armament a Shkval torpedo can carry? Five kilotons of TNT?” asked Ekman, and he caught Sven’s eye. “What would that mean in terms of damage?” Ekman sat on Sven’s chair as he got the answer. “The whole central part of the city? You must be joking. Yes, Admiral. I understand, ten million pounds of TNT, the entire central part of the city, I understand.”

*

Sven and Ekman continued to handle the administrative details of the crisis. They set up a command post at the south end of Långholmen after soldiers had cordoned off everything east of the bridge which cut the island in two.

This was the same place where a JAS-39 fighter aircraft had crashed and burned one hot summer afternoon only two years before, at the apex of a military air show in the middle of Stockholm. The island and the bridge had been crowded by onlookers that afternoon, amazed to see the pilot eject and the plane go into an uncontrolled, flat spin, finally crashing onto the island only yards from the bridge. Oak trees next to the bridge still bore scars of the fire which had consumed the plane. Fortunately very few people were on the island this time; it would be much easier to empty the civilian population of twenty people.

The walk back to Sara’s office seemed to take her longer than usual. The Hoffberg room had been cleaned out and she had to look up Mrs Spimler’s telephone number in the phone book.

“Hello, Mrs Spimler,” said Sara. “I was wondering if you’ve heard anything from your husband recently?”

“No, I haven’t. But I’ve been thinking about our boat, the Little Miss Perfect. Martin loves that boat, even though it’s just an old military scow. Will we get it back sometime?”

“Yes, certainly. As soon as Forensics have finished with it. Mrs Spimler, we’ve had a development in your husband’s disappearance. I’m going to send someone out to speak with you, if that’s OK. When would be a good time?”

Sara heard the gasping, the sob, the same sound she always heard when people figured out her news was bad news. She wished there was some way to avoid it, some way to quickly get to the next stage without having to cross that bridge, but it was always there, with no way to keep it from happening.

“He’s dead, isn’t he? I’ve been expecting something like this, actually,” said Mrs Spimler. “Couldn’t I just come into your office?”

“We can meet at my office if you want. Would you be able to get here this afternoon?”

“Now? What aren’t you telling me?”

“Nothing.” Sara closed her eyes as she tried to keep from telling a lie. “There are just a couple of details you could help us with. Looking over some equipment, things like that.”

There was a silence, and Sara imagined she could hear Mrs Spimler’s thoughts stuttering their way through the telephone line. “OK, I’ll be there. I’ll have to fight the rush hour, but I’ll be there as soon as I can. You left your card. Is that where you want me to go?”

“Yes, that’ll be fine, Mrs Spimler,” Sara said. “And maybe you could bring in your husband’s telephone records during the last few months, if you can find them easily.”

“Of course,” she said. “Do you know anything about how he died?”

“We’ll speak about it when you get here. There’s some equipment I’d like you to look at, if you can.”

Sara called out to the patrol boat for an update and the officer told her the Combat Boat had just arrived. A team had been sent down to assess the threat, to see if they’d be able to remove the body without setting off the torpedo, and the Medical Examiner was already there waiting for a closer look. She’d have her answer soon, he said.

She went down to the café to wait for Mrs Spimler. By the time she got there, Sara was in a mild state of shock herself. When she got back from Sven’s room she’d found a note the receptionist had put on her desk about a call from the hospital where her grandmother was a patient.

After speaking to Mrs Spimler, she got a cup of tea and called the nurses’ desk in the ward. The head nurse told her that her grandmother had passed away last night. They had tried to contact her several times. She should contact a Miss Gomez tomorrow, who would help her make the arrangements. The news wasn’t unexpected for Sara, but not being able to share her grief with anyone made it hard to keep her thoughts together. She got memory jogs from her childhood and the sound of her grandmother’s voice only a few days ago, complaining about the staff at the nursing home. That voice would never be anything more than a memory now, and Sara wished for some kind of receptacle where she could store it along with all the other memories before they faded from her mind and were no longer recallable. Well, Sara thought, I won’t have to worry about getting her evacuated. She’s already as far away as she can be.

*

Sara sat in her office, waiting for Mrs Spimler to be ushered in from the reception desk, and images of a long green cylinder, shaped like a rocket she’d seen in the manual, flashed through her jumbled mind, combined with the sound of gravel being sprayed on her car when Lemko had come shooting up the hill on his electric motorcycle. She was on the edge of a nervous breakdown, and probably the worst person to be meeting Mrs Spimler under those circumstances.

“Hello, Mrs Spimler, I’m so sorry about all this,” said Sara, reciting the ritual phrase supposed to get them off the hook.

“You said you didn’t know if he was dead. Has there been a change in that?”

“No. I’ve been exposed to some dramatic events myself today. I’m a little off balance. Please forgive me. Nothing has changed regarding your husband. If you’ll come with me to the Medical Examiner’s office we can look at some equipment we found. You might be able to help us in our investigations.”

“To tell you the truth, right now I’d almost be glad to hear he was dead, just to get the uncertainty cleared up. Of course I’d be much, much happier if he were to walk in the door, but that hasn’t worked so far. Is it far away, the Medical Examiner’s office?”

“It’s close to Karolinska Hospital, in Solna. It won’t take us long. Do you want to follow my car out there?”

“I couldn’t drive,” said Mrs Spimler. “I took a taxi here.”

“No problem, we’ll go in my car.” Sara was happy to have something else to think about for a few minutes. She called the Medical Examiner before they left to make sure the body had arrived, and they told her it had already been identified using their zip-zap fingerprinting methods, but they would be happy to meet with the widow and help take care of her. Sara wondered if they’d be as thoughtful at the hospital where her grandmother was lying, but rushed the thought out of her mind as they drove the few minutes over the bridge to neighbouring Solna, the home of the implantable pacemaker, prostaglandins and the Medical Examiner’s office for Stockholm; the Coroner, handler of bodies which died unnatural deaths.

Sara looked over at Spimler’s wife as they stopped at a traffic light, and she could see Mrs Spimler was nearing a frantic state. She was in a bad place right now, with bills to pay, a life to get on with and a husband who was missing and presumed dead.

Sara asked about the Fish Project: water pollution in the lake? Mrs Spimler knew nothing, except that her husband’s primary interest was in amphibians.

“You know, frogs and toads,” she said, keeping Sara, the poor dumb cop, informed in case she’d missed out on primary school. Then she told her she’d overheard Hoffberg and her husband discussing some kind of project only a few months ago, when Hoffberg was visiting. She said Hoffberg was sure they were going to change the course of the world, and all Martin would have to do would be to help out a little. It was shortly before their trip to Tallinn.

*

Sara could tell from the reception they got when they arrived that not only did they know it was the body of Martin Spimler, but the coroner was pretty sure about the cause of death.

A curator took care of Mrs Spimler. Standing outside the curtain, Sara could hear her explain that quite probably he’d died because of an accident. He’d been trapped under a heavy object during a dive and his air had run out. The curator explained that because of the type of diving gear he’d been using he’d experienced no pain or discomfort, just a dizziness followed by unconsciousness, then death from carbon dioxide asphyxiation. There was a quiet moment as the curator showed Mrs Spimler a photograph of Martin’s wedding ring and a tattoo he had on his left shoulder.

“Yes, that’s Martin,” she said softly. “Could I just say goodbye?”

Sara went into the cold room to meet with the coroner and found him busy working on Spimler’s body. He looked up from an incision he was about to make. “We’ve identified your victim as Martin Spimler, missing for nearly two weeks now, and from what I can see on the screen, also a suspect in the Hoffberg murder case. The evidence so far would indicate that you can scratch him off the list. He was very likely dead at the time of Hoffberg’s murder.”

“That makes life easier,” said Sara. “What about cause of death? Could he have been murdered too?”

“It’s hard to say until I get my hands dirty,” said the coroner, “but the quick money is on an accident: carbon dioxide poisoning, causing hypoxia. Rather hard to find traces in a body, but his breathing device was a CCUBA, a recirculator that filtered out the CO2 until it finally became so fully charged it simply passed the CO2 back into his breathing tube. Your diver wouldn’t have experienced any difficulties in breathing, but the amount of oxygen he’d have been getting in during each breath would at one point have become too low to sustain life. He would have experienced a second of panic just before passing out and dying from lack of oxygen.”

“Could the device have been tampered with?” Sara asked, still looking for a murder.

“Of course. It’s the amount of fresh soda lime in the filter that determines how long you can use it before dying. I’ll look at it closer when I’m done here, but from the looks of it I’d say he just got pinned down by the green cylinder in the picture over there and died waiting for someone to find him.”

Sara went over to the photographs taken by the Navy divers, and could see Spimler’s body pinned at the midsection by an object about two feet across and twenty feet long. The CCUBA breathing device was on a table below the picture.

“I don’t see any air tubes at all. Why would he be using this kind of device?” asked Sara.

“Like I said, a CCUBA,” said the coroner. “Attack divers use them when they don’t want someone on the surface to see their exhaust bubbles. This kind of device doesn’t leave any exhaust bubbles at all. It recirculates the gases.”

“The Spimler widow is outside. Do you think she could get to see her husband before you chop him up? She’s come in all the way from Stallarholmen.”

The coroner looked up with a scowl and put his scalpel down on the tray next to where the body was lying. “It’s highly unusual, and you should know that most people don’t react very well to the stench of formaldehyde,” he said, “but I can put a sheet over his body and she can come in for a quick look if you’re sure that she won’t be involved as a suspect at any time in the future.”

When Sara returned with Spimler’s widow, the coroner had not only covered the body from the chin down, but had also rolled the table with the CCUBA gear closer to the door, and taken down the photographs pinned to the wall. Mrs Spimler turned away almost as soon as she came through the door, gave a little gasp and covered her mouth.

“I’ve changed my mind,” she said weakly as she turned away. “I’ll say goodbye at the funeral.”

“OK,” said Sara. “I thank you very much for your time, Mrs Spimler, and I’ll help you get a taxi home if you like.”

It would be a lonely evening for Mrs Spimler, but she could cry herself to sleep knowing instead of guessing or hoping. Within a few days she could begin to take steps to rebuild her life.

After she’d gone Sara went back into the cold room and looked at the photographs again.

“Still looking for a murder?” asked the coroner.

“I’m not sure. But I am wondering how he got pinned down by whatever this is.”

“Maybe he wasn’t working alone. Maybe someone else dropped it on him.”

“That sounds like a better explanation than him squirming his way underneath it to get trapped. When will you have the results of the autopsy?”

“The head of the National Police Board called to tell me I’ll be getting paid double overtime if he can get the results before 10 pm, if that tells you anything.”

“It tells me this case just got very important,” Sara said on her way out. “It also tells me I won’t be able to get the results at all in this century.”

*

CIA Station Chief Michael Rice put together a list of equipment and team members deemed necessary to complete the three contingency plans his mission group had compiled. It was a long list, dealing with three possibilities: finding the weapon on land, underwater, or least likely, on some aircraft. Each solution included a diversion. Common to all the plans was the probable necessity to disarm the warhead if it had been armed. This would require a demolitions expert with a long list of skills, including dealing with the VA-111 and language skills in Russian. Nearly all the demolition experts he could find filled the latter requirement. None of them, however, had any experience with a Rocketfish. Diving gear, extraction vehicles for underwater or land use, satellite surveillance technology – all this was available within hours, if he needed it. How his team would disarm a nuclear warhead if it had been armed made his stomach grumble, and he chewed on another tablet to soothe his burgeoning ulcer.

*

Sara drove back to her office, thrown off track by the thoughts of her own loss. She’d have to let her mother and father know about Grandma’s death; there was no guarantee the hospital would have been able to contact them on their own. Her mother would be easy to reach if she was still in the country, but her father wouldn’t even be on the list. It wasn’t something Sara wanted to think about right now. It was easier to keep trying to understand how Spimler had become pinned down by the torpedo.

She went to her office, entered without turning on the lights and sat down, staring out the window, focusing on a single star in the winter sky. She tried to imagine Spimler working by himself, lowering the torpedo onto the bottom of the lake, a piece of rope suddenly breaking and the torpedo landing on him. That seemed impossible, and a new image formed, with two men, both guiding the torpedo, and a rope breaking to send it onto Spimler’s stomach. That didn’t seem very likely either, and finally Sara saw Spimler looking up at the torpedo as it hung from a boat just above him. She watched him signalling to someone on the surface to lower first the back end of the torpedo, then, after it had been aimed at the House of Parliament, motioning to lower the nose that carried the warhead. Sara saw him make a final adjustment, sweeping off some debris from the bottom just where the torpedo would have to lie, then, too late, feeling the torpedo as it touched his back.

As she closed her eyes she saw in her mind how Spimler would have tried to roll over to protect his breathing device, working hard to kick his way through the ever-decreasing gap between the lake bottom and the torpedo, then she saw how the torpedo had fallen onto him, pinning him with his face looking up, waving at the man on the surface for help, and watching helplessly as one of the two boats suddenly disappeared, the high-pitched whine of its engine receeding. Spimler would have hoped that help would come soon; he had only a few minutes before the soda lime filter on his breathing device would be exhausted, and he would have tried to think of his wife, his work with frogs, and realised that the rest of his life would now be very short indeed. If it went down like that then it had to be Hoffberg up there, Sara thought, and it must have meant he planned on using the torpedo soon. It’s been quite a while since Spimler died, so a clock-timer to start the torpedo must be running down if it was started. There might be some kind of switch, or a way to set it off from a remote location.

*

“There’s a clock running, counting down. It’s got a switch on it,” said the diver as he spluttered his assessment to the Swedish mission coordinator in the Combat Boat, “and there’s a cable running off in the direction of the island where we’ve got our command post set up. I’ll follow it. Get a team to wait for me at the shore.”

“Roger that,” said the coordinator, a young man who had spent most of his life playing combat computer games. This time it was for real.

“And tell them to keep all radio and telephone traffic to a minimum,” said the diver. “We don’t know what’s on the other end of that cable. And tell them,” he spluttered again as the choppy waters of Lake Mälaren choked him, “tell them there isn’t much time left on the clock.”

*

Sara left her trance and became aware of the others running around outside her office, and she turned on the light. It reminded her of some of the fire drills that had been held to honour the government’s commitment to terrorist threats and general preparedness. This time it was different. There was already a press release lying on Sara’s desk.

Chapter 20

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

A military exercise has been scheduled to take place within the innermost part of the city of Stockholm today and tomorrow, beginning 1500 hours October 15th and ending 2400 hours October 16th. The exercise will involve units of the Coastal Defence, including a Combat Boat 90 and a military helicopter which will be present in the area at various times during the manoeuvres. The exercise is being carried out to train the defence of strategic government buildings, including the Parliament Building. A command post will be set up on the island of Långholmen and the public is kindly requested to refrain from entering the area east of the bridge crossing the island. No pleasure craft will be allowed in the waters of The Bay of Knights between the Old City and West Bridge during this exercise. Any questions will be handled by the Press Secretary of the Navy at the number below.

*

Manuals were coming out of desks, phones were put into action and the smell of adrenaline began to permeate the air. Each person had a task; each function would make the clock tick through to a successful completion. In theory.

Unfortunately most of the errors discovered during five years of drills had never been dealt with. There were still gaping holes in every procedure. Lists included those to be informed by people who had now retired, telephone numbers which had been changed and sections reorganised. It began to look like controlled chaos, but chaos all the same.

Sara was supposed to first inform her immediate superior that a state of emergency existed, and she checked off that box as she watched Sven call his superior, the head of the National Police Board. Her next step was to secure the premises. This had always been easy to do at the NBI: the entire building was divided into compartments sealed off from one another by coded entry points, and she checked that box too, just like everyone else. She had a list of telephone numbers to call, each with a specific function. Most of her numbers went to some first responder organisations: the hospitals, fire department and the ambulance service. On her first try she was asked to make a few choices, pushing buttons as she did so, and she was put into a telephone queue by a tinny, telephone-robot voice who informed her at regular intervals that her call was being monitored and told her that her number in the queue was gradually decreasing.

Sara hung up when she heard she was number eighty-six in the queue. Another unchecked box.

The fire department was easier, and Sara read them the contents of the press release she’d just faxed.

First there was silence on the other end. Then the obvious question: “Isn’t it a little late to be informing us of this now?” asked the officer. “We’ll do what we have to do, of course, but it would have been nice to know this yesterday.”

“I can’t agree more. But I haven’t got much time to debate it right now. Thanks for your attention. Goodbye.”

*

Sven was trying to reach the office of the Prime Minister, and was having the same frustrating experience as Sara.

“Shit,” he called out, and smashed the receiver onto the cradle. The PM couldn’t be reached because he’d already been removed by the NSS team assigned to safeguard his life. He was in a convoy of black vans, travelling at breakneck speed towards his mansion about two hours south of Stockholm.

*

The PM and his political secretary were facing each other in the bullet- and bomb-proof SUV, both of them wearing camouflaged flak jackets and helmets. Sweat ran off their faces.

“I think we should get some outside help on this,” said the PM. “I’m not sure our boys have the background to disarm a nuclear warhead.”

“We should have evacuated the city a long time ago,” said the political secretary, aware that sooner or later someone would be empowered to do a follow-up of the events of the past week. “We’ll be crucified if this isn’t contained.”

“Wrong. We’ve pulled off crises far worse than this one. Remember Chernobyl? Nearly one third of the country was affected by radioactive fallout and several places declared unfit for human life by that American team of experts, and did we panic? No way. We told everyone there was nothing to worry about and it worked. All you have to do is to remain in office long enough. It takes guts to have power today, remember that.”

“Yes, Prime Minister,” said the political secretary, careful to include the title so important to the man before him, a man already resolving parts of the crisis.

“Where should we look for help? The Russians? It’s their weapon, so they would be the best ones to understand it. The Americans? They have a lot more money, and want it even more than the Russians. Maybe we could have an auction.” The PM’s voice regained its usual timbre and forcefulness.

The helmet the political secretary was wearing seemed to be trying to remove his large, horn-rimmed glasses, and he had to adjust them every few minutes. “Do we have to wear these things? We have to be well beyond the perimeter of an explosion by now.”

“Use your own discretion,” said the PM through a smile. “I’m keeping mine on until I’m sure your head won’t get blown off and injure me.”

Before they arrived at the PM’s mansion a call was made to the Russian ambassador, who expressed mild surprise that he’d just been invited to the personal home of the Prime Minister. The Russian Embassy was in the centre of the city, only a few hundred yards away from the island where the torpedo lay on the bottom of the lake, and the PM was careful not to divulge the reason for the personal invitation to visit his home. He didn’t want to use this ace until the very last card had to be played.

*

Ekman had two cards to play. He contacted Captain Peters in Munich first.

“Captain Peters? We have a situation here. We’ve found the Shkval we spoke of when you visited me. Unfortunately it’s in Stockholm, submerged in the lake, aimed at our Parliament Building.”

“Oh, Jesus,” said Peters. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Our Naval team has discovered the torpedo has been armed and is set to go off in a little more than a day. It’s connected to a cell phone via a long cable. We think the idea was to have a backup plan, to call the number and send it on its course even before the timer came to an end, if necessary.”

“Then I guess you guys have it covered. Well, it’s good to know it’s surfaced, so to speak. I’m sure my superiors would like to help you disarm it, if you need help, that is.”

“I’m not sure that’s appropriate right now. I was calling you regarding the agent you spoke of, Schneller. We caught him too.”

“Now that is good news. Is he the one who planted the torpedo?”

“He’s not saying much to us. Admitted a murder, but won’t give us any reason why, except to say he liked doing it. And then there’s Hurtree. It seems your pensioner was involved in his capture. First I’d like to thank you for his assistance, and then ask you to get him out of here as soon as possible. He knows a little too much, if you know what I mean.”

“Oh sure, I’ll talk to him as soon as I can. Do you know where he is right now?”

“No. He was with our investigator, Sara Markham, at the time of Schneller’s capture. That’s all I know. I pulled her off the case days ago, but she can’t seem to follow orders. We almost lost Schneller because she and Hurtree got in the way. Anyway, when I got Schneller in the interrogation room I asked him if he knew of Hurtree, and even though he said he didn’t it was obvious he was lying. There seems to have been some bad blood between them when they were both active.”

“Bad blood isn’t quite strong enough,” said Peters. “They would have killed each other if they’d been given the chance, so I’m not surprised Schneller reacted when you mentioned Hurtree’s name.”

“He also said something about an information specialist up here, someone called Magdalena. Did you find out anything about her in your files?”

“I’m the wrong person to ask about those times. You should talk to Hurtree, he was the one who was working with the German BND on all those people.”

“OK. I guess I might need him a little while longer. Try to have him contact me if you can get hold of him. And please, don’t give him any information about our situation. By the way, I’ll make sure your country’s expertise in disarming the Shkval will be considered by the appropriate people. Thanks.”

Ekman’s next call was to Michael Rice, who had already been informed by the switchboard. “Hello, Mr Ekman.”

“Hello, Station Chief Rice. We don’t have time for pleasantries. I may need your help.”

“No problem.” Michael Rice closed the door to his office, walked to a filing cabinet and pulled his file on the NSS. He wedged the phone between his ear and shoulder, as he opened the file to a page which had Lars Ekman’s photo on the upper right-hand corner. “How can I help?”

“Do you remember our conversation last year, when the MS Sally went down?”

“Yes.” Rice’s answer seemed to take several seconds to complete. He flipped to the next page in the file, headed by a photograph of the MS Sally taken before she sank.

“It seems, uh, the thing which everyone was looking for last year has been located.”

Station Chief Rice exhaled, the burst of air carrying through to Ekman. “I suppose you can’t tell me where it is?”

“No,” said Ekman, “of course not. However, we’ve faxed most of the embassies a press release regarding a military exercise to take place today and tomorrow. You might want to look at that.”

Station Chief Rice pushed a button on his intercom and shouted orders to the front desk as he opened the file containing the contingency plans.

Ekman listened to the commotion on the other side, and Rice’s reaction to the fax about the military exercise in the centre of the city.

“When do you begin the evacuation?” asked Rice.

“We have no indication there will be one,” said Ekman.

“What? Well I’m starting one for our citizens in Stockholm immediately,” informed Rice.

“I think you should perhaps wait for that,” said Ekman, “If you were to do that then every American citizen in the City would make a bee-liine for Arlanda Airport, and on their way they would be sending mass texts to all their friends. Within fifteen minutes we’d have international chaos, and your ability to help would diminish considerably.”

“I’m listening,” said Rice.

Ekman continued, “I think you might be interested in a document that we’ve obtained as part of an investigation.” He grinned as he imagined the effect his next words would have on Rice. “Would you be interested in a copy of a manual, by any chance?”

The whoop could be heard on the entire third floor of the embassy. “You’re damned right I would be. How do we do this?”

“I have an errand to run near City Hall. Perhaps we could meet there in an hour. The men’s room of the restaurant? Stadshuskällaren.”

“I’ll be there,” said Station Chief Rice. “And Lars, thanks again. Not just from me – the entire United States is thanking you.”

“That remains to be seen,” said Ekman.

“How much time do we have?” asked Rice.

“About twenty-five hours,” said Ekman, “And no evacuation.”

*

About an hour after Ekman had put down the telephone, the USA-27, also known as Improved Crystal, a KH-12 high-resolution, surveillance satellite, was moved into position about 190 miles above Stockholm. Within minutes it was broadcasting real-time images of the helicopter, the police patrol boats, the Navy Combat Boats and their command post on the eastern tip of the island of Långholmen. An infrared sensor was also collecting data on the water to a depth of sixty feet, including a long, cylindrical object pointed due east towards the centre of the city. The sensor even picked up the slight difference in temperature caused by the decaying plutonium in the nose of the warhead. The Rocketfish was ready to run, and waiting to be switched on.

*

The Russian ambassador was on his way to Sweden’s Prime Minister in the wooded farmlands just west of the little town of Katrineholm. He knew something important was happening as soon one of his informants at a major newspaper had called in the press release regarding the military exercise in the middle of the city. The same trick had been used when Yasser Arafat had visited Stockholm, demanding security well beyond what the city police could have offered.

The Ambassador’s limousine pulled into the gravelled driveway in front of the house. The house would cost a fortune to run, even after the PM had left office, but he’d already prepared an EU agricultural grant to provide him a sizeable income for his ‘farm’.

The Ambassador became nervous when he noticed that the armed guards bristling with HK automatic weapons were also wearing combat helmets. When the PM informed him of the weapon lying a few hundred metres from his family’s living quarters at the embassy, he had to excuse himself and went to the toilet. His easy assignment in the decadent West had suddenly become a deadly trap. He washed the taste of vomit from his mouth and tried to call his family, but his cell phone was refused by the base station mounted on a tree within sight of the PM’s house.

“We’ve decided not to evacuate the city,” said the PM when he’d returned, “and your embassy is in no danger either, as long as we can rely on your assistance in removing this weapon.”

“Of course,” said the Ambassador, trying his best to remain calm. “Of course we’ll assist you in any way we can. I’ll make contact with my military attaché, and he’ll have the appropriate people sent here as soon as the team can be assembled. We’ll need use of the airport at Bromma. I’ll also have to be able to use my cell phone, and there seems to be a problem with it out here.”

“We’ll provide you with a telephone you can use if you give us the numbers to call. I’m afraid we’ll have to ask for your cooperation in keeping this quiet, so no calls to your embassy or your family will be allowed at this time. I’m sure you understand.”

The PM, his political secretary, and the Russian ambassador worked for several hours, devising the extension of the military exercise taking place in Stockholm. A military team who worked as instructors with the VA-111 were already being prepped and would arrive from the Naval base at Kaliningrad before lunch the next day. A Swedish military limousine would be waiting for them at Bromma Airport to take them and their equipment to the command post on the island near where the Rocketfish was submerged.

After disarming the weapon, they would attach slings to the torpedo, and a Swedish Navy helicopter would fly out from the base at Muskö, winch up the torpedo and ferry it back to Bromma Airport, where it would then be loaded onto the military transport aircraft waiting for them.

It was nearly midnight when they were finished, and the PM offered the Ambassador a late supper. As they finished their cognac and coffee the Ambassador put one final chip on the table.

“I’ve heard you managed to apprehend a murderer, an ex-Stasi agent whom we know as Schneller. Is that not correct?”

“You seem to be better informed than I am,” said the PM, “but that very well could have happened. I do know we have apprehended a suspect in a very high-profile murder case.”

“It’s better that you haven’t been informed, actually. I would like to add a condition for our help in disarming the torpedo in the middle of your city,” said the Ambassador. He took a long sip of cognac, draining the glass, and placed it demonstratively in front of the PM. As his glass was being refilled, he continued, “I would very much appreciate the opportunity to have this man called Schneller released into our custody. It seems he can provide us with information about the theft of some of our military material in Estonia, and you seem to have been very good at catching him.”

“I’m not sure we can do that,” said the PM, and a large knot appeared on his forehead. “We have some very specific rules about how much power I can wield at the level of individual government agencies. It would be very difficult for me to just call someone and have him released into your custody.”

The Ambassador smiled, recognising the truth in what the PM was saying, while at the same time knowing that when the PM wished for something to be done he could find a way to do it with no problem whatsoever. He raised the ante again.

“Well, I’m sure your political secretary might find a way to contact me with details of a prisoner transport, providing me with a place where the vehicle will stop for coffee and doughnuts. We’ll take care of the rest, providing, of course, our team manages to disarm the torpedo. Or let’s put it another way: after a certain coffee break has been successful, our team will be much more motivated to disarm the torpedo. Have I made myself clear, Prime Minister?”

“Oh, definitely,” said the PM, and produced a thick suspension file labelled The Gazprom Project from the briefcase at his feet, placing it on his knees. “And since I do understand you, then perhaps we can continue by discussing the gas pipeline from your country, across the Baltic and into Germany. You do understand it requires our Parliament to take a favourable view of the project, and that may not be as easy here as it would be in your country. However, if we could, let’s say, imagine a case where the pipeline is allowed to come ashore in Stockholm also, and that we could get your help in determining the price of the first ten years of gas delivery from your country, then I think the discussions in our Parliament might be a bit easier to predict. Actually, with this price freeze in place I’m sure we can get almost everyone on board, especially since you’ve appointed Carl Picqtore, the most important politician from the Opposition, to the board of directors of Gazprom. I’m sure you’ll have no difficulty in agreeing to a price of $200 per thousand cubic metres, especially when we agree not to re-export to our neighbours. Now, if you’ll just sign this Agreement in Principle, we can use it to create the document for your own Prime Minister and myself to sign at our meeting next month.”

Both men laughed jovially as the PM produced a pen for the signing. At the same time he called for his political secretary to discuss the details of how Schneller would be transferred to another, much safer, prison.

*

After leaving the PM’s house in the forest, the Ambassador finally found a radio base station which accepted his telephone. He hit a number on his speed-dial list.

“Shoreman,” answered the man on the other end.

“Niklas, the torpedo has just been found and will soon be disarmed. I have negotiated a deal whereby our friend Schneller will be moved to another location, for our own good. I want you to make sure a team can intercept him and get him back to us. We will be able to retrieve the torpedo, they’ve agreed to that, and those damned Americans can sit there and watch on their satellites as much as they wish. Did you get that, Niklas?”

“Yes, Ambassador.”

“Then just do it. We’ll meet later when all this has become much calmer.”

“Yes, Ambassador, goodbye.”

Chapter 21

Sara spent a few minutes during breakfast speaking to Miss Gomez regarding the arrangements for her grandmother’s funeral. When she got to work, the lake in front of City Hall was still cordoned off by two Combat 90 military patrol boats. The helicopter had been pulled back during the night, but crowds of spectators were still clumped together on the shoreline, in spite of the freezing weather.

She went into Sven’s office to get some help in making up a report to account for her presence at Lemko’s arrest, and also to explain how she had been able to find the torpedo lying submerged within sight of the Parliament Building.

“Good morning,” said Sven. “I hope you haven’t found any more bodies, weapons or spies. I’m having a great deal of trouble explaining why you always seem to be in the right place at the right time.”

“It’s the eighty-twenty rule. Eighty per cent of the good luck goes to twenty per cent of the police. I was born on the right side of the equation.”

Sven looked away to view the tops of the bare branches on the trees in the park across the street. He had a three-window module, a rare symbol of power in the police force, and it was sought after by a number of other bosses on the same floor after each post-election reorganisation.

“It’s going to be a warm winter,” he said. “The Laplander was reading his fish-guts the other day on the TV and he said there would hardly be any ice on the lake at all this winter.”

“I never listen to all that fish-gut crap. But I’m all for it if he’s right. I never was much for winter sports anyway. Always preferred to go bowling instead.”

“Well, it’ll help if we don’t have to put up with ice on the lake tonight, in spite of the freeze this morning. You’ll hear this later on when I inform the team. The torpedo will be disarmed and a Huey helicopter from Muskö is going to extract it and transport it to Bromma Airport. Did you get your new case?”

“The beating of the drunk in the underground station? Yeah, seems very easy. Lots of witnesses, the boys’ confession, and no other suspects. The paperwork is probably the hardest part.”

“You should be thankful. Ekman thought you were out of line on the Hoffberg case, but I pointed out to him it would never have been solved without you.”

“Thanks, boss.”

“And I also told him you weren’t going to get involved in it anymore, and the entire team was being disengaged from the case. He seemed much happier to hear that.”

“Tell me, should I have let it go? Would it have been better if the torpedo was still unknown to us? Suppose someone had called that telephone number by mistake and set it off – is that what Ekman would have preferred?”

“Ekman only deals with his world,” said Sven. “He can’t answer questions like that because in his world there are no ‘ifs’, just facts. He leaves the conditionals to the politicians he works with, and he lets them make up and answer the questions as they like.”

“So what was your answer to me? Should I have let it go?”

“You shouldn’t have asked the question. That’s the right answer. Just do your job, fill in the blanks in the forms in front of you and don’t try to be more than what we can be. It’s just a job, Sara, we’re no more than civil servants doing the bidding of the master of the minute. Don’t make us out to be more important than we can ever be. I’ll need your report on Lemko’s capture, including anything he said to you, on my desk by the end of your shift today.”

Sara got up to leave, and Sven added one final dart, a bullseye. “And you might as well hear it from me. Lemko, Schneller or whatever his name is will be moved this afternoon to a more secure prison until his trial.”

“What? What could be more secure than where he is today?”

“Someone thinks he needs more protection than he’s getting where he is,” said Sven, waving a finger towards the ceiling, indicating it came from higher up; very much higher up.

Sara’s eyes narrowed, and she raised her hands in submission as she sat down again.

“I can’t believe it,” she said. “I catch this guy, and now the power freaks get worried about him? Where are they putting him up? The Prime Minister’s own villa?”

“Don’t take this personally, Sara.”

“How do you do it, not get involved?”

“I always get involved. So does Ekman. We just don’t let our humanity get in the way of the job.”

“Sounds a little like becoming a machine.”

“On the contrary. The reverse also applies, Sara. The job shouldn’t get in the way of our humanity.”

“So what makes you human, boss?”

Sven sat quietly before he replied, then he smiled. “I like soccer. Nothing gets in the way of soccer. Just like Ekman, ask him sometime.”

*

Sara walked over to Cantsten’s office to lose some of the steam building up inside of her. It was gusty, freezing, but her gloves seemed to radiate heat rays from her hands.

When she got there Cantsten had already left for a session in court, so Sara left her a message about the status of the Hoffberg case and added a note that Cantsten could call her if she wanted details about her new case, the beating of the drunk in an underground station. She was on her way out to the street when a bleeping from her cell phone let her know that Hurtree was active again.

“Hello, John. How was Estonia?”

“Depressing. And bleak, and windy, and cold, and depressing. And bleak.”

“Sounds exciting. I’m almost sad I couldn’t be there.”

“You should have seen it. The train out to Paldiski was like a trip to hell. I was surprised I was allowed to return.”

“Then maybe the Devil has something in mind for you. Ever think of that?”

“I don’t talk to the Devil all that often.”

“You never know, John.”

“I know I’m hungry,” he said. “You owe me a hot dog from the last time I was here and I’ve decided to let you repay the favour, whether you like it or not. Where can we meet for lunch?”

They decided on the Central Train Station, and met there. Sara bought him a pizza instead of a hot dog, and told him a little about how she’d found the torpedo, then asked for details on his trip to Tallinn.

“Not my favourite place. It was cheap to get there and back, but I doubt I’ll do it again, and if I do I’ll wear a lead suit. Paldiski must glow in the dark. Did you know they were manufacturing plutonium there?”

“No,” said Sara. “Did you find out anything else?”

“Yeah, I did. Someone there knows a lot about what you people are doing up here. He told me Schneller had been put behind bars. Word travels fast in some circles.”

“What? You met someone in Estonia who already knew we’d arrested him? Not even the press knows that.”

“Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. I guess every silver lining has a cloud attached to it. I’d say someone down there is in bed with someone up here,” said Hurtree, finishing his pizza.

“Did they say anything else?”

“Just that Paldiski and torpedoes were dangerous, but I knew that already. Oh, right, he also told me to try to get to see Schneller and tell him to do his job or he would die. Then he told me his dog didn’t like me. The feeling was mutual, believe me.”

“Do his job,” Sara mused. “I wonder what he meant by that?”

“He got off the train before I could ask him. And I was glad he did. Not your nicest tour guide. So what about your torpedo? You said it was close by.”

They took a short walk from the train station out to a jetty with a view of the water in front of City Hall, where they could see the flashing blue lights on the military patrol boats in the distance. Hurtree asked her about what was going to happen to Schneller – he always called him Schneller – and he laughed when Sara told him they were going to move him to a more secure location.

“Sounds like Swedish moose-shit to me,” Hurtree chuckled. “I’d say they’re moving him so they can trade him off. It’s either us or the Russians. Are you getting any help with disarming the torpedo?”

“I don’t know, but they’re supposed to remove it sometime today after it’s been disarmed. The whole team is out of the loop since the NSS got involved. Would they do that? Use Lemko as a bargaining chip? I mean, he’s a killer.”

Hurtree gave Sara one of his ‘come now, little girl’ looks, as he said, “We would. If the guy was of any value in the future, you bet. I don’t know what he could mean to the Russians, but I know there are a lot of people on our side who’d like to spend a few hours with him in a locked room. He knows a great deal about what went on up here during the Cold War.”

“Yeah, and so what? The Cold War is over.”

“It is? Who won? I’m not keeping score, but it seems to me the difference between the Cold War and today is that now we’re using bullets and bombs, instead of stockpiling them like we did before.”

Sara couldn’t argue with that. It seemed like a new war-of-the-day every time she turned on the news, and they always seemed to be fought in far-off places. She always looked at the local people in the news reports and their faces seemed to tell the same story she’d seen on documentaries about the Second World War: fatigue, hopelessness and wonderment that the cameraman taking the film would be allowed to survive, even though they knew the minute after he left could be their last.

“You’re depressing me, Hurtree. I just lost someone close to me and I don’t need to feel like the world is coming to an end before supper.”

“Well, if those guys out there don’t do the right thing with that torpedo you might be very right about the end of the world, at least for us. How ‘bout going somewhere warm if you have time? I’m not used to your Swedish winter yet.”

“It isn’t cold yet, John. That won’t happen for another two months.”

“Maybe you should tell it to those crazy sailors out there.” Hurtree pointed to a catamaran making wide, nearly incontrollable turns close to City Hall. “They look like amateurs.”

The catamaran seemed to heed Hurtree’s concern, and the boat abruptly straightened up its course to head for the flashing blue lights of the Combat 90 boats guarding the location of the Rocketfish.

*

Under the water below the guards, two divers using CCUBA equipment removed the cable attaching the mobile phone to the torpedo. Their next step was to stealthily attach propellers to the torpedo. Above them, one of the Combat boats started the engines. The divers looked up at the spinning props of the boat overhead, and prepared for their journey.

As one of the Combat boats accelerated to fend off the approaching catamaran, the divers began to steer the torpedo from under the boats towards the centre of the channel. The inexpert sailor on the catamaran was told to sober up and move his boat towards the centre of the channel, which he promised to do. The skipper of the Combat Boat shook his head in disbelief as he backed to where buoys marked the location they were guarding, and dropped anchor.

On board the catamaran, the man at the rudder sailed past both Combat boats on his port side. He waved and grinned at the sailors and continued his capricious course towards West Bridge, the link between Stockholm’s southern island to the next island, Kungsholmen. He sailed under the bridge, tacked to starboard, expertly sailed past the guest harbour for pleasure craft and made for Smedsudden and a group of three small islands overgrown with trees and brush at the end of a public park.

Behind the shelter of the cove, he heaved to, hauled the sail and dropped anchor. He threw a sharp white strobe light into the water to guide his divers, then worked feverishly, running between the stern and the deck between the two bows. Within five minutes he heard the sound of his team members’ breathing over the clucking of the water between the two hulls of the catamaran. He heard them cinching the torpedo to the loops he’d thrown out.

Two knocks aft, then two knocks from the port bows. He started the winches and the Rocketfish began its rise to the surface. A single knock from the aft and another from the bow told the skipper that the torpedo was above water, straddled by the catamaran, and he stopped the winches, hauled in the strobe light and took his team members on board. Now they just had to disarm it.

*

Earlier that same morning a wedding party in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad had stopped their rented black Lada limousine at Königsberg Cathedral to place roses on Immanuel Kant’s grave, one of very few places with a German background left after the Soviets took over most of Prussia following the war. It was the couple’s way of registering a concealed protest against the Russian government, a symbol of solidarity with a European philosopher.

The wedding party looked up as they heard the sound of a military jet leaving the air base close to the Baltic. Almost immediately, the USA-27 satellite high over Stockholm captured the image of a Russian AN72 Coaler Military Transport aircraft bearing the team from Kaliningrad’s Chkalovsk Naval base as it approached Stockholm from the southeast. In less than fifty minutes it would be sweeping in over the E4 Essinge Skyway to land at Bromma Airport.

*

The military observers in Chantilly, Virginia, sent a terse message to the mission leader sitting in his grey Mercedes sedan with a view over the waters of Lake Mälaren. Below him the team on the catamaran was still trying to disarm the warhead. It wasn’t as easy in real life as it had been during the dry runs using their newly acquired manual.

The mission leader shouted into the communications unit connecting him to the catamaran, “Get moving, guys,” as he backed his car to a place where he could turn around. “How much time is left on the clock?”

The skipper on the catamaran tapped one of the divers on the head, then motioned to his watch. “Time left?”

“About three hours,” came the response, which was relayed to the mission leader.

“Can you keep at it while you move?” asked the mission leader.

The response from the catamaran’s skipper was crisp and left no doubt. “No.”

“Then get them up on deck. You have to be at the loading dock in less than thirty minutes.”

The skipper started the twin outboards, as his divers pulled up the anchor and they backed out into the channel. The engines whined as the propellers dug into the water.

“We weigh a lot more now than we did this morning,” the skipper complained to the mission leader.

“Just don’t drop it.”

“Maybe we could fire it up and just shoot ourselves over to…” He caught himself, bit his lip and left the rest of the message unsaid.

“Just don’t drop it,” came the reply.

The catamaran sailed south of Lilla Essinge Island, then veered north to pass under the E4 Essinge Skyway high over their heads. There was little other traffic on the water as they continued towards the bridge between Kungsholmen and the mainland at Alvik, Traneberg Bridge. Then they saw it: a coastal freighter beginning the tight turn to cross under the bridge. The skipper on the catamaran looked at his watch, judged the remaining distance to the bridge and opened the outboards to a full scream.

*

The mission leader had already driven the Mercedes to the loading dock in Bällsta Cove and had positioned the truck, extending the dual cranes out over the water where the catamaran would soon be arriving.

“Where are you?” the mission leader shouted into the microphone in his sleeve.

Silence.

He waited a long minute, then again, “Where are you?”

“Got my hands full,” was the reply, an exact description of his situation.

As the catamaran had swept to the wrong side of the freighter, both vessels used the narrow channel under the bridge. The wake of the freighter caught the catamaran from the port side, and it bounced hard on the wave. Then it bounced again, this time straining the brake on the forward winch holding its share of the two tons of torpedo between the hulls.

There was a squeal as the brake let go and the front of the torpedo began to dip into the water, ploughing into the waves and sending torrents of spray onto the deck of the catamaran.

On board the freighter men stood at the railing, shaking their fists and shouting epithets in a language the skipper had no time to try to understand. On the deck of the catamaran all three men grabbed the line holding the torpedo, straining to secure it, then began to winch it back into place by hand, their hands leaking blood from the cuts left by the sharp edges of the nylon ribbon.

Over their heads they heard the whine of the AN72 Russian Coaler as it approached Bromma Airport. The crew on the catamaran was nearly as surprised as a pair of plane-spotters living on the island of Kungsholmen, who had never before had the opportunity to check off the overwing, twin-engine military transport which appeared just overhead. They made sure the news was on the internet before the Coaler had landed.

This had been a busy day. Only hours before, the plane-spotters had monitored an emergency request from an American C-130 Hercules to land at Bromma Airport because of engine failure, and watched as the huge four-engined aircraft had approached Bromma Airport with one prop feathered.

“How big is the problem?” asked the mission leader.

“I think…we’ve…fixed it,” the skipper on the catamaran was panting into the microphone.

“ETA?”

“We just passed under Huvudsta Bridge. Maybe two minutes,” came the response.

“Is it disarmed?”

“Not yet.”

Chapter 22

Ekman and Sven were in an unmarked van parked at the end of John Ericsson’s Street overlooking the water, with City Hall and the Parliament Building to their left. Behind them posters in the windows of a travel agency advertised sun-drenched beaches. Sven munched on a sandwich from a small café just down the street. The site of the Rocketfish recovery operation was almost directly in front of them. They both used binoculars to observe the activity taking place at the military command post on the shore of the island.

“How long do you think it will take to disarm it?” asked Sven.

“I’ve never been close to a torpedo, let alone one tipped with a nuclear warhead,” said Ekman, “so I guess the answer is, as long as it takes.”

“Answers like that always make me nervous.”

“You don’t have to be nervous,” said Ekman. “If something goes wrong out there we won’t have time to be frightened. We got the letter from Hoffberg this morning. Can you keep this under your hat?”

“Yeah, sure. We never heard about a letter from Hoffberg.”

“No, and until this morning neither had I. The PM’s personal secretary at Parliament received it last Monday, just two days after Hoffberg was murdered. It was directed to the PM personally and was only a couple of lines long. A simple demand: Do as I say or I’ll set off a nuclear bomb in the centre of Stockholm.”

“What? Why wasn’t that acted upon?”

“It was too bizarre to be believed, and since it was signed by an ex-MP, the mail clerk thought it would be best if the PM was informed first. Then they gave it to us.”

“Yes, and?”

“Well, it went through our organisation at the speed of the Swedish bureaucracy, which means using the one-document-a-day principle. Even our people thought it was just too incredible to be true and assumed it was some prankster. The officer assigned to it didn’t even bother trying to contact Leo Hoffberg to tell him some jerk was using his name to make ridiculous threats to the nation.”

“But his death was on the national news on Monday,” said Sven.

“Yeah, that’s why he stopped his investigation. He assumed the prankster would find another MP’s identity to hijack.”

“Why is it we think anonymous threats are more dangerous than the ones we can identify? There must be something wrong with our system, seriously wrong.” Sven put down his sandwich and picked up his binoculars again to see what was happening at the disarming site.

Ekman did the same. “No, that’s not it. The threat was too incredible to believe. It was too big. If he’d threatened to run over the PM’s wife then maybe we’d have seen it coming, but this? A nuclear device? Especially coming from such a peacenik type of person. It just didn’t fit.”

“Then how did Hoffberg expect the PM to take it seriously?” asked Sven. “I mean, a threat that isn’t understood is exceptionally dangerous. It means the perpetrator has to make good his threat before the victim even understands the danger he’s in.”

“Yeah. A game of poker where one of the players thinks he’s playing bridge. Not a good plan for anyone.”

“The whole thing seems to have been hatched by a madman,” said Sven. “Do we know how Hoffberg got hold of it in the first place?”

“We know Spimler was assigned to execute a dive on the MS Sally after she sank, to do a feasibility assessment about bringing her up to the surface again. He must have found the torpedo then, and hid it somewhere so he could retrieve it later on. We know, uhm, we heard that the torpedo was on board when they sailed from Tallinn that night,” said Ekman as he shook his head back and forth.

Sven looked at Ekman, his mouth open in surprise. “What? We knew it was on board? Why didn’t we do anything about it then?”

“We did,” said Ekman. “That might even have contributed to the sinking of the ship. Customs got a call from the US Army, who told us they’d observed the torpedo being loaded on the MS Sally. They put one of their men on her to coordinate things when the ship arrived in Stockholm the next morning. As soon as customs got the call they organised a team to search every commercial vehicle coming off the ship, and they were briefed about an hour after she left Tallinn.”

“I still don’t understand what that has to do with her sinking.”

“We’re not one hundred per cent certain,” continued Ekman, “but we suspect someone, somewhere, got hold of this information and leaked it to a crew member on board the MS Sally, a person who could arrange to dump the truck carrying the torpedo in the middle of the night when most of the passengers had gone to sleep. We know the ship made a strange turn just before she sank, backing into the wind, which was nearly gale strength that night. We suspect what they tried to do then was to open the outer door, raise the bow visor and roll the truck off into the sea. It was the last vehicle loaded on board that night. From the looks of the damage to the bow visor, which was found over a mile away from the ship, I’d say the ship caught a large wave when the visor was opening and the full weight of the ship was concentrated on a couple of metal hinges as she plunged into the wave. It would have been like driving out of the garage with your car door open, the door would have just popped off and after that there was little they could do, with tons of water coming in every time they pitched into a wave. Radar data indicated they tried to back the ship all the way to Tallinn before they sank.”

“And after Spimler gets hold of it, he and Hoffberg get together and decide to blackmail the government?”

“It looks that way, yes.”

“Could Hoffberg have read about this in one of the official reports to Parliament? I mean, as a member of the Defence Committee he’d even have access to the parts marked secret.”

Ekman’s moniker in the police force was ‘Rubberlips’, and it became clear why as he looked over at Sven, his facial muscles exercising as he tried to work out how much more he should reveal.

“What you just heard was never a part of the official report. If it had been in there, it would have been an official secret and I wouldn’t have been allowed to tell you anything about it. So no, Hoffberg could never have found out about the torpedo via any of the official reporting. It’s been a very closely guarded secret until now.”

“Who else knows?”

“Very, very few,” said Ekman. “The kind of people who could make the decision to begin to cover up the MS Sally with gravel and cement to seal it off forever.”

“The government,” said Sven. “I’m surprised they’ve managed to keep it a secret so far.”

“It was easy to do as long as the torpedo remained out of circulation. The Russians thought the Americans had stolen it before they got there, the Americans thought the Russians got it in the same way, and we were just happy someone got it when we couldn’t find it either. No one ever expected it to surface again. Certainly not as a tool to do blackmail.”

“Hoffberg must have been crazy. Freaked out big time. I wonder if Spimler knew what was going on.”

“All the evidence indicates they were both in on it,” said Ekman, “but building a case for blackmail will be difficult and not very relevant, since they’re both dead now. Who do you think killed Spimler?”

“Sara thought it might have been Hoffberg that did it – killed him before he went home and got killed himself,” said Sven. “But she doesn’t always use hard evidence for her theories.”

“According to the Medical Examiner it wasn’t murder at all. Just a simple accident. Spimler got pinned down by the torpedo and died from lack of oxygen. Anyway, we can be pretty sure Lemko didn’t do it, since he seems all too eager to be put in jail. If he’d killed Spimler, he’d have admitted to that too. Did you hear about the transfer?”

“Yes, I did. I thought you were behind that.”

“No, it came from over there,” said Ekman, and pointed his finger towards the building where the government was housed: Rosenbad.

“Well, I hope you managed to get something out of Lemko about why he killed Hoffberg.”

“Nothing, actually. He just said he enjoyed it. There’s obviously a link to the torpedo out there, but we haven’t found it yet.”

A black dot surfaced, bobbing up out on the water just off the command post, then the dot started waving his arms in a two-arm criss-cross, a signal to be picked up. A rubber boat was beside him in minutes. Lars Ekman and Sven raised their binoculars and watched as the man was hauled onto the rubber boat.

“Well they’re in a hurry, but I don’t see them running away. You know what the bomb squad guys wear on the back of their t-shirts?” asked Sven.

“Yeah, the part about getting in front of me was almost funny, but I don’t see you laughing.”

Sven put down his binoculars and looked over at Ekman. “You’re not nervous, are you?”

“Not for me,” said Ekman, “I got used to all this years ago. It’s like being a fireman: you’re in the middle of a fire all the time. You know you can do it as long as you follow your training. It’s only when you start to think you can get into trouble. I just hope that those guys out there paid attention during their training.”

“So where’s the Huey?” asked Sven. “I mean, if they’ve disarmed it? What are we going to do with it?”

Ekman’s voice became quiet, dry and businesslike. “I suppose the military knows what to do with it. We’re just spectators at this point. But I do want to know what’s happening so that I can use it when I get to interrogate Lemko again. I’m sure the details will get him off balance. You’ll send me Sara’s report about what he said to her before we got to the ferry terminal, of course.”

“Yes. It’s being done now.”

*

In reality, it wasn’t. Hurtree and Sara were still standing on a bridge overlooking the water, the Parliament Building behind them, just to one side. The red-brick tower of City Hall rose out of a garden at the water’s edge to their right. Directly in front of them, beyond the stretch of agitated water surrounded by the islands making up the centre of Stockholm, they could make out the dark, wooded shore of the southern tip of the island of Långholmen, the dreaded prison island, which until 1975 had hosted the central prison for Stockholm. In 1910 the island had been the scene of Sweden’s last execution; on a cold, wet morning, a murderer had been led to a simple courtyard and a guillotine that had been erected on the cobblestones.

“The prison’s a hotel now,” said Sara, pointing towards the island. “You can sleep in a cell on a simple mattress just like the prisoners did, and they don’t chop your head off unless you can’t pay your bill.”

“Oh, great,” said Hurtree. “I’ll have to stay there sometime. I’m surprised you guys didn’t fix me up there the last time I was here.”

“Yeah, we actually joked about it,” she answered, “but Sven was worried you might get angry. That was before we knew you.”

“Yeah, and now that you do, you know I’d get very angry. Sara, it’s getting dark, but those military patrol boats out there seem to have moved and they’re blocking the view of what’s going on.” He pointed towards the end of the bridge. “Shall we get inside?”

The wind tore at their clothing as they neared the end of the bridge. They stopped and turned towards the source of the flopping sound of twin rotors on the approaching helicopter. On the island of Långholmen pandemonium had broken out.

*

The Russian diver’s search had been fruitless. The Rocketfish was nowhere to be found.

There was feverish activity at the Command Centre on Långholmen. Explanations and accusations were being thrown back and forth, no one being eager to be the one to have to explain how it was possible that the torpedo could have disappeared from under the patrol boats without their knowledge. A Swedish Navy major was shouting at the Captains of the Combat boats. The Russian mission leader was shaking his head as he spoke to his own commander in Kaliningrad, and he held the radio from his ear as the shrill howl of a response arrived. No one seemed to be able to comprehend what had happened to the Rocketfish, but it became clear that everyone was to blame.

The twin rotor blades of the Boeing/Kawasaki helicopter from Muskö Marine Base added to the commotion as it hovered over the Combat boats, waiting to transport the errant torpedo to Bromma Airport.

Sara and Hurtree chose to freeze for one more minute. They watched in silence as the Huey switched on spotlights that focused on the surface of the lake, then flew back and forth.

In Chantilly, Virginia, the crew monitoring the screens of images from the Improved Crystal satellite over Stockholm switched from the camera viewing the Command Centre on Långholmen to Bällsta Cove and the truck with both cranes extended in front of the catamaran. They watched in silent concentration as the torpedo was raised from the water and brought onto the flatbed truck parked parallel to the loading dock.

The men from the catamaran jumped onto the concrete edge of the loading dock and leapt up into the truck, which followed the Mercedes sedan already leaving the industrial area. Both vehicles turned right on Ulvsunda Way and drove for little more than a mile, then exited up to Travar Way, turned right on Bällsta Way and drove nearly a mile to where they made a left at the traffic light. Both drivers waved at the man in the security shed and the vehicles continued into the airport hangar area.

The dark grey C-130 was shielded from the view of others by several large hangars, and stood with all four engines running, the freight door open and ramp extended to the tarmac. A crew member on the C-130 motioned to the driver of the flatbed truck, and he continued driving up the ramp.

“Is it disarmed yet?” The voice of the C-130 pilot had a tremor even he didn’t recognise.

“No,” responded the mission leader, buckling himself into his seat. “Get clearance and let’s get outta here. We’ll have company shortly.”

*

The Americans were not the only ones using satellite technology to follow the events taking place in Stockholm. When the Russian mission controller in Kaliningrad focused his view on his AN72 Coaler he increased the magnification to view the wings of the C-130 standing only two hundred yards away. It wasn’t unusual for the Swedish Air Force to bring C-130s into Bromma. Sweden owned and flew eight of them, most of them used to transport goods to rescue missions in other countries.

Then he saw the flatbed truck, with its long, narrow cargo hidden under a tarpaulin, drive into the cargo bay of the C-130. He watched as the aircraft moved out towards the runway. He saw the C-130 turn onto the runway, and sighed in dismay as he noticed the USAF insignia on the wings as it quickly gathered speed and rose in a sharp takeoff, clearing the highway at the end of the runway by nearly thirty yards. He radioed his men at the Command Centre on Långholmen. Their AN72 Coaler was nearly twice as fast as the C-130 Hercules. They would have to scramble, but might be able to catch it before it got to the safety of NATO airspace. They would at least try.

“Bromma Control, this is AN72 Coaler requesting takeoff slot.”

“Coaler, this is Bromma Control. We have a military exercise taking place here. Air traffic not allowed at present. Stand by.”

*

Ekman and Sven were closer than the satellite observers, and had the advantage of binoculars to help them observe the pickup. The men in the water were now obscured by the patrol boats, but the spotlight on the Huey sweeping across the water near the buoy marking the location of the Rocketfish lit up the scene in a kind of white, dreamlike shimmer. Ekman and Sven focused their binoculars on the Huey, and under the lenses, both men wore the same boyish smile, a fascination with the power of men’s mechanical monsters and what they could do.

Sven kept his binoculars fixed to his face as the large helicopter turned and flew past them on its way out back to the island where it was stationed. “Well, I think I’ll stop holding my breath now. Mission accomplished. But wait. They didn’t pick up anything. And it’s leaving.”

Ekman sat without saying a word, his gaze fixed on the helicopter which continued its journey eastward, passing the Old City and then disappearing out of sight. He put down his binoculars, and stared incredulously at Sven, then back at the empty, darkening sky. “That was our Huey, but that’s not the way to Bromma,” he said, motioning with his hand to the right. “There’s a Russian transport aircraft waiting to take the torpedo on board. But they didn’t pick it up. What the hell is happening?”

He dialled his security-encrypted cell phone as he spoke. “Patch me through to the Navy Command Centre on Långholmen immediately,” he said, and then, “I don’t give a shit if it’s busy. Patch me through now. I don’t care how you do it!”

A sardonic smile broke out on Ekman’s face when the major in charge of the Command Centre on Långholmen Island told him the torpedo had disappeared.

“Really? Any idea where it could be?”

“This is a pile of dog shit and I’m going to be crucified for it,” was his answer.

“What are the Russians doing?” asked Ekman.

“They’ve packed up everything already and left for Bromma.”

*

“Bromma Control, this is AN72 Coaler requesting takeoff slot again.”

“Coaler, this is Bromma. We may have an aircraft landing soon. Stand by.”

“How long must we wait, Bromma?”

“Stand by, Coaler.”

“Bromma Control, this is AN72 Coaler. We are in position for takeoff. Affirm immediate takeoff.”

“Coaler, this is Bromma Control. You are on an unauthorised runway. Do not continue.”

“Thank you, Bromma Control. Affirm AN72 Coaler is cleared for immediate takeoff.”

“Negative. AN72 Coaler, you are not cleared for takeoff. Bromma Control.”

The blast from the overwing twin jet engines on the Coaler vibrated the windows of the control tower as it rushed by. The air traffic controller grimaced as the aircraft gathered speed to take off. He saw it nearly jumping vertically off the runway, then veered to the northwest. He glanced at his radar screen and thought to himself, At least I bought them a few more minutes.

Chapter 23

At the home of the Swedish Prime Minister the silence was broken as the fax whirred. The page with the current report dropped onto the tray. The PM picked it up, swallowed several times before handing it over to his political secretary, and they both sat down facing each other.

The PM was first to speak. “We’re going to have to call Moscow very soon. We’ll have to have a complete strategy. They’ll assume that if the torpedo has been stolen, the Americans are involved, of course, and they’ll assume we’re in on it. The Americans aren’t saying anything to us, except to offer their help in surveillance, and they’d do that even if they stole it.”

“So how do we play it?” asked the secretary. “If we don’t offer to help the Russians, we’ll look like we’re in on it. If we do help them and the Americans are behind it, we catch it in the ass the next time we need help ourselves.”

The PM leaned forward, folding his hands together in a prayer-like gesture, then he threw his heavy body backwards, nearly tipping the armchair he was sitting in. “I have it!” he said. “We’ll ask both Moscow and Washington for assistance.”

“Do you think that will work, Prime Minister?”

“Do you mean, will it help us find the torpedo? No, of course not. It’ll just get us off the hook. They’ll end up squabbling with each other and in the end we won’t have to do anything. In the end it’ll be the one with the most muscle nearby that’ll get it, and that’s probably going to be Moscow, so we should be a little nicer to them than to the Yanks. I’ll call them first.”

The call to Moscow was made after that, but the result wasn’t exactly the scenario the PM had assumed. Before he could make his offer and ask for assistance, he was told in no uncertain terms that the torpedo belonged to Russia, and that it would be reclaimed by Russia. Any attempt to get involved would result in the loss of Swedish lives. He was told Sweden could take up the matter via the EU if they wished, but Russia didn’t negotiate with small countries in Europe anymore. He was also told the meeting scheduled to discuss the gas pipeline through the Baltic had been cancelled for the time being. When the call was over the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces in Sweden was waiting on another line.

“Good afternoon, Prime Minister.”

“Good afternoon, Supreme Commander.”

“I’ve been briefed on the situation at hand and I’m ready to take any action you deem necessary.”

“It looks like the Russians are intent on taking the torpedo, regardless of where it is, or what we do. In fact, I was told to keep out of the way. Politically, it seems wise to take their advice right now.”

“Militarily, it makes sense. They’d chop us into hamburger if we tried to get in the way. Have you been briefed on the latest developments, Prime Minister?”

“We had a fax about twenty minutes ago. Why? Has anything changed?”

“It seems an American C-130 was involved in the theft of the torpedo. It’s on course to enter Norwegian airspace soon.”

“And if the warhead were to explode in Swedish airspace? What would be the consequences?”

“The Crisis Team has informed me there would be two significant consequences. First, we’d lose electricity to large parts of the western counties until the power companies could redirect from other sources. Second, the mountainous regions of Dalarna would become poisoned by radioactivity. Because of the current wind conditions, it’s possible large parts of the greater Stockholm area would also be affected – how much is hard to say until it happens.”

“How many people are we talking about?”

“I heard them speak of approximately half a million people affected, casualties in the order of ten thousand.”

“Thank you, Supreme Commander. Does anyone know how this screw-up happened?”

“We’re investigating that, of course, and you’ll be informed as soon as we have an answer.”

“That’s not good enough, Supreme Commander. I want to know what you think happened.”

“If you mean who fucked up first, I guess it was you politicians, when you didn’t get rid of the torpedo in the first place. And from what I’ve heard, the guy who brought it into the city was once a Member of Parliament, even sat on the Defence Committee. We didn’t arrange to have Russian military forces operating in our capital either. If it had been up to me I would have asked the Americans to remove it.”

“It wasn’t up to you. I’m the Prime Minister. I have to make decisions like this every day. Including who I need to have as my Supreme Commander.”

“Yes, Prime Minister. Will there be anything else?”

“Do you know if the Russians have left Stockholm yet?”

“Yes, Prime Minister, they’re chasing the American transport plane towards the Norwegian border. I’d say they’re preparing an attack on the C-130 as soon as they’re within firing range.”

“And if the torpedo is damaged or explodes?”

“In that case, the sooner the better, since they’ll be over mountains, which will limit the damage.”

“Keep me informed in case anything drastic happens. I need some time to think,” said the Prime Minister.

“Prime Minister?”

“Yes?”

“I’m going to order the evacuation of the city of Mora.”

The Prime Minister spluttered, “But…but you can’t do that. I forbid it.”

“On the contrary, Prime Minister. I can’t do anything less than that.”

*

After the Russian military transport left Bromma Airport, Sven and Lars Ekman returned to Police Headquarters. Sara had left Hurtree in the centre of the city, and had been called to the Communications and Command Centre, a room which always reminded her of NASA Mission Control. Rows of CCTV monitors and desks were manned by nearly fifty police officers, all looking very stern and concerned, no one certain of what was going on.

Sara was sitting at one of the desks used by patrol units to call into if they needed assistance, filling in for a police assistant who needed a break. She was working the radio desk, a policeman’s own 911.

The activity near Långholmen had generated a few calls, but otherwise the room was quiet when Sven and Ekman walked in, and it was easy for Ekman to get everyone’s attention as he shouted, “Alright, everyone, listen up. The emergency we were dealing with earlier this afternoon has been resolved. You can inform the public, or anyone in the field, that the military exercise they observed has now been concluded. I thank you for your attention and concern. Now let’s get back to work.”

Lars Ekman and Sven went over to the desk coordinating military info. Ekman took up a telephone and made a call. Sara got the distinct feeling that the emergency wasn’t quite over; that it had just been moved somewhere else for the time being.

The red lamp in front of her flashed, indicating an incoming call, and she answered to hear the voice of a young policeman shouting into his communications radio. He was out of breath, speaking in short, staccato sentences, and Sara asked him to calm down so she could understand what he was trying to say.

“We’ve had a problem. With our prisoner. Seems to have escaped. Can’t find him.”

Sara asked him to identify himself and to give her his location. He told her they were at a truck stop in the town of Arboga, about a two-hour drive southwest of Stockholm, on the way to the prison at Kumla. Sara told him she’d get him some help from the locals in Arboga, and that they should keep looking for their prisoner without moving their vehicle. She asked him for the name of the prisoner for the log.

“The name on the prisoner manifest is Lemko,” he said.

Sara stood up and signalled to Sven, who saw her arms waving in the air just as he was leaving the room. She kept talking to the policeman, writing down more details. She showed Sven the notepad as he trotted to her desk.

“It’s Lemko,” she said quietly, so only he could hear. “He’s escaped.”

Sven sat on the chair next to the desk, his shoulders slumped, and shook his head slowly as he began to process what he’d just been told. “It feels like we’re losing everything today,” he said. “I wish it’d been someone else who had told me. Just tell me you didn’t have anything to do with the transport detail.”

Sara looked at him and sighed a deep sigh. She tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. He’d had a hard day; had probably been forced to put up with a lot of crap from Ekman.

“I can catch Lemko. I think I know where he’s going,” she said.

“How could you possibly know that?”

“It would take longer to explain than to catch him. It wasn’t anything he said when I spoke to him in Malmö, it’s just a feeling I have. I think he’s been abducted, snatched. It’s possible someone’s interested in knowing what he knows. He was so happy to be in our custody. And if he got picked up in Arboga then I have a feeling I know what they’re going to do with him.”

“Which is?”

“Gothenburg,” Sara said. “They’re going to take him out of Sweden via the ferry to Denmark or Germany. They both leave at the same time. I can catch him if you’ll let me work on it.”

Sven looked up at her. His eyes were red from being rubbed again and again. He looked over at Ekman who was pointing at monitors, telephones held to both ears at the same time.

“OK.” Sven held his gaze on Ekman and his voice dropped to a loud whisper. “If you’ve done your report on the capture down in Trelleborg then OK, you get to go. Just be careful to follow the rules this time, Sara. You’re becoming very heavy baggage to carry.”

“Thanks, boss,” said Sara, and somehow she couldn’t resist giving him a pat on his shoulder. “I promise to do everything by the book.” She was out of the Communications Centre before Ekman caught sight of her.

*

On the way down to her car she called Robert on her cell and asked him to call the policemen who had been transporting Lemko to Kumla to get some details on the time they’d arrived at the café, and to ask if the parking area was covered by video cameras.

If they could get a fix on the vehicle that had been used to abduct Lemko, she might be able to close in on them before they got too far. As she backed her car out of the parking space, she thought of calling Hurtree to see if he wanted to ride shotgun, but decided against it. This time she’d follow Sven’s rules. Do it by the book, Sara, she reminded herself, as she popped the blue light onto the roof of her Peugeot.

Before she got to the bridge over Södertälje Canal, Sara had Robert on the line telling her what he knew. The two Police Assistants driving Lemko to Kumla had been told not to stop before Arboga, and they’d pulled into a truck stop there for coffee. They’d handcuffed Lemko to the car while they went into the café and when they came out Lemko was gone; the chain and half a handcuff still dangling in the car. Robert told Sara a video camera pointed at the parking lot had captured the arrival of two cars which parked next to the police transport, a grey Mitsubishi and a white van. He gave her the licence numbers of both vehicles and asked her if he could help with anything else.

The video camera had filmed the entire sequence, showing both men as they freed Lemko with a bolt-cutter and forced him into the van, then backed the Mitsubishi behind the police transport, blocking its exit. The van exited on its way towards Gothenburg.

Sara saw the bridge loom ahead, and needed to decide whether to try and follow the kidnap vehicles, or get in front of them by taking a quicker route to Gothenburg.

“Robert, I need to know if either of those vehicles have reserved a spot on the ferry to Fredrikshavn or Kiel tonight. Those ferries leave around 7 pm. Call Stena Line and let me know what you’ve found out. I’m going to take Highway 40 from Jönköping and break every speed limit there is. You can get the guys in Gothenburg to take them into custody at the check-in if they’ve booked. With any luck, I could be there just before the boat leaves. You can also alert the airports down there – Landvetter, Västerås and Sturup should be enough. I don’t want Lemko getting out of Sweden. Oh, and just in case, call the ferry terminal in Helsingborg and our guys in Malmö that watch the bridge to Denmark, and alert the group watching the border to Norway at Svinesund Bridge. If we can box them in it’ll be easier for our traffic patrols to pick them up.”

Sara threw the cell phone onto the seat beside her and began to concentrate on putting as many miles behind her as possible for the next five hours. She was barely an hour into the drive when her phone chirped again. Robert had an update.

“They’ve booked three passengers and a car on both the ferry to Denmark and to Germany. They both leave Gothenburg around seven, just like you said, but it’ll mean we’ll need two teams to be sure to catch them.”

“No. Once they get into the ferry terminal they’ll have to send someone to pick up the boarding cards before they can enter the departure area. That’s where we can get them. Notify Gothenburg. Tell them to keep them in custody at the terminal until I get there.”

“OK. Sara, I thought we’d been pulled off the Lemko case?”

“Yeah. We were. Now he’s either a fugitive or a kidnap victim, and it’s our job to get him back. Has anything new happened with the torpedo?”

“I haven’t heard anything new since it went missing. What a mess. You should’ve seen Ekman’s face when he found out about Lemko’s disappearance. He went completely ballistic. Demanded that those two PAs be transferred to incoming freight.”

“What’d Sven say?” asked Sara.

“He didn’t say anything about you. Just listened to Ekman ranting about the lack of competence today. The boss kept cool the whole time.”

“Let’s hope he stays that way. Let me know if Gothenburg has anything to report.”

Sara slipped back into concentrating on the two cones of light that were being cast by the headlamps, the flashing blue light on the top of her car painting strange shapes on the forest on both sides of the road. She turned on the radio to listen to the six o’clock news.

There was a short blurb about the military exercise in the middle of Stockholm, and then something about a major telecom company which was having financial difficulty and would have to let several hundred people go. News like that washed over her sometimes, but she had a hard time relating to it. She knew it was tragic for everyone involved, that families would have to make huge adjustments, and there would be homes without a Christmas tree, no presents for the kids. Sara still had a hard time getting it into her problem-solving mind. She had to draw the line somewhere, and with so much crap to deal with at work she couldn’t take more on board without risking a nervous breakdown.

Her grandmother’s passing was still hanging on the periphery of her awareness. The curator at the hospital had helped her with all the major details of the funeral, including contacting her parents. All Sara needed was to find time to grieve, which was proving hard to do.

*

She was well on her way into Gothenburg when her cell went off again, bringing her back to the real world, and she wondered where she had been during the last two hours. Time spent in another dimension.

“They just called from the ferry terminal,” said Robert, “and they got them, all three of them.”

She hooted out her joy. “Yes!” A surge of adrenaline shot through her body, making her eyes bug out, and creating a very unflattering picture as she blasted past the traffic camera. “Yes, and just tell me they’re holding everybody until I get there.”

“Lemko is in custody. But the two guys in the van said they picked him up at a truck stop in Arboga as a hitchhiker. Their story checked out with what Lemko told them, and the drivers told the officers they’d miss their boat to Kiel if they were detained, so the officers got their names and addresses and let them go. They’re probably having dinner on their way to Germany right now.”

“You must be joking. They let them go? How did they explain who cut off the handcuff? Did Lemko bite through the chain with his teeth?”

“Lemko said it was a defective handcuff, that he simply jerked on it until it broke. The arresting officer said he seemed very happy to be in custody again.”

“Really? Let’s see what he thinks when I show up. Tell them I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.”

“I wish I were in Gothenburg,” said Robert.

“Why, what’s up?”

“They’ve shut down the power grid in the western counties and begun to evacuate everyone within a ten-mile radius of Mora towards Stockholm.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

“I can’t find out. All they’re telling us is what’s happening, not why. Personally I think it has something to do with the torpedo.”

*

“Haven’t you disarmed it yet?” the American mission controller shouted over the sound of the four turbo-fan engines just outside the shell of the C-130. “We have to make a decision very soon.”

“It’s the manual,” replied the demolitions expert. “It’s ambiguous. It depends on whether the clock was set to turn on the rocket motor, or to detonate the warhead when used as a mine.”

“Yeah, so what are you saying?”

“There’s only one off-switch. If I turn off the clock which might start the torpedo, it might detonate the warhead as a mine. If I turn off the clock which might turn off the mine, it might start the rocket motor. I’m not sure if this torpedo was upgraded. There have been some, uh, rumours about this control system.”

“Rumours?”

“Yes. We’ve heard that on the older models, once you start the clock, you can’t turn it off without detonating the ordnance.”

The mission controller sat on one of the canvas flight chairs screwed to the wall. Blood drained from his face. He closed his eyes for a few seconds, then asked, “Are there any options?”

“Yes,” said the demolition expert. “One. I can try to take the warhead apart and remove the fusing mechanism. That’s what I’m doing right now.”

“When will you know if it works?”

“You won’t know if it doesn’t.”

A red light in the hold began flashing, and the mission controller returned to the cockpit.

“Chantilly tells me the bogy behind us is the Russian Coaler we saw at Bromma Airport. They’re catching up fast.”

“They wouldn’t chase us if they weren’t packin’. Have you asked Orland Main Station in Norway for help?”

“They scrambled two F16s. They’re hanging around at the Norwegian border, but we gotta get there first. Norwegian pilots. They won’t violate Swedish airspace.”

“What kind of aircraft is chasing us?”

“Antonov 72. The Swedes probably wouldn’t let them carry missiles under the wing, so we’ll only have to deal with cannon fire.”

“Can you outfly them?”

“This is a propeller-driven freighter. They’re flying a jet freighter. The only thing I can do is fly slower than they can. And lower.”

Chapter 24

The sting of Kristina Hoffberg’s voice when Sara had asked her for Leo’s telephone records was like a broken track on a damaged CD, repeating itself until Sara felt like she had to turn it off. She’d learned a long time ago that what caused this was one of the sources of her success when it came to solving crimes, so she never took that last step. She kept the memories active until they finally found a home in the bulk of evidence surrounding the cases she dealt with.

Now, as her car approached Gothenburg, the chance to interview Lemko created other questions in her mind. She’d finally have a decent chance to interrogate him and maybe get this case completely solved once and for all. The horizon in front of her was brightening with the orange-coloured neon street lamps that signalled her approach to Gothenburg. It wouldn’t be long now.

When she arrived at the ferry terminal, there was a police van parked beside the entrance. Sara tapped on the window to get the attention of the driver.

“I’m Sara Markham,” she said, holding up her ID card, “from the National Bureau of Investigation in Stockholm. I hear you managed to catch a fugitive we’re looking for.”

“Oh, him in the back?” asked the driver, a police assistant who seemed too young to have graduated from the academy. “He keeps asking for something to eat. I told him he’d have to wait until you came.”

“Good. Are you alone?”

“No, my partner’s upstairs talking to a witness. The guy in the back had a ticket and boarding pass issued to him, but he was in the back of a van, sitting with some German when we caught him. The other German was the one who purchased the tickets.”

“Where are the Germans?”

“We let them go,” said the PA. “We waited as long as we could – they would have missed their ship otherwise. They just picked up your guy at a truck stop in Arboga.” He nodded back towards Lemko. “He confirmed that himself, so there wasn’t much else to do.”

“Then who’s your partner talking to?” Sara asked, barely able to conceal her irritation after being reminded they’d let two kidnap suspects loose.

“The girl who sold the tickets. She’s pretty hot,” said the PA.

“So very lucky for him. Get him down here. Now. I want you both to take your prisoner to the Central Prison in the city. I’ll be right behind you. Can you manage that?”

Sara sat in her car, watching as the driver came running over to the police van, and she followed closely behind them as they pulled into traffic. She could see Lemko’s silhouette when the windows were illuminated by street lights, and she hoped there wouldn’t be an attempt to free him, or worse yet, to kill him as they drove towards the police station. Her nervousness gave way to a sigh of relief when they pulled in front of the receiving section for prisoners and the gate locked behind them.

She was inside at the receiving desk before they were, and she made arrangements for an interrogation room where she could talk to Lemko while they did all the administration of popping him into a cell.

*

Sara sat waiting for Lemko, and looked up as he was led into the interrogation room. She could see he recognised her, and he chuckled as they were handcuffing him to the table.

“I remember you. You seem to like ferry terminals.”

“So do you,” said Sara. “Now tell me, this story of you hitching a ride from Arboga. It’s crap. Who were the two German guys we let go?”

“I’m not sure. The presentation wasn’t exactly formal.”

“I’d be interested in knowing how you got out of the police van in Arboga. You were handcuffed to the van.”

“Yes, well, as I told those young police officers, I just jerked on the chain and it broke. Faulty material, I guess.”

“Faulty answer. I looked at those handcuffs and they were cut, so cut the crap, Lemko. Who cut you loose, and why?”

Lemko’s face seemed to sprout wrinkles, and he looked at least five years older. She remembered when she’d first seen him dressed as a woman, and how his blonde wig had come off as they’d wrestled in the ladies’ room just days before.

“I don’t remember who cut them,” he said, “and I never asked why.”

“Lemko, those guys probably meant to kill you as soon as they’d tortured you for whatever you know. If you like, maybe we can arrange for them to come back and pick you up again. Do you understand? I want some answers, and I want them now.”

“I’ve already admitted to killing Hoffberg.”

“Why?” Sara asked, and she interrupted his answer as he began by shouting, “And don’t tell me you liked it again. Tell me why you did it.”

“I thought you said you didn’t work for the NSS? What would I get from you if I told you?”

“A trial and jail time in Sweden. Hopefully for a long, long time.”

Lemko weighed his answer carefully. “I was looking for something. Hoffberg knew where it was, and he wouldn’t tell me,” he said. “I just made sure he wouldn’t tell anyone else either. It was that simple.”

“Why were you looking for something?”

Lemko looked her in the eye for a moment, searching for something he hadn’t found in her question. “Aren’t you interested in what I was looking for?”

“No. Why were you looking for it?” she asked again.

“I, uh, I was getting paid to do it. It was a job.”

“And your employer?”

“Someone with a lot of money. I never met him, but he knew about me from my days at, you know, Stasi. All I had to do was to find what he was looking for and everything would have been alright. Hoffberg was very stupid.”

“Maybe he didn’t know where it was.”

“He knew, he knew. He just wouldn’t tell me. I told him about the risk he was running, that I’d have to kill him and he just said it didn’t matter. It sounded like he was dying anyway.”

“How do you know he knew anything about it at all? How could you be so certain?”

“I knew someone from before, a person who used to provide me with information – I used to call her Magdalena. Hoffberg had paid someone for a document in Estonia and left a lot of tracks after him. When I got his name I contacted Magdalena and asked for her help. She’s good at her job, she had the address and a complete time schedule of personal habits in no time at all.”

“Magdalena, huh?” said Sara, and she stole a glance at Lemko’s face. He seemed very tired. “Did you meet with her?”

“Not this time. The last time we met was when she worked in the city years ago. She left a report on the status of your government’s discussions about joining the NATO alliance.”

“NATO? Was she a defence specialist?”

“No. She was a book-lover. Just a very convinced person, politically I mean, very single-minded. She was dating a man who had all kinds of defence information. She never told me who he was, only that they were seeing each other.”

“Was she Polish? How did you make contact with her?”

Lemko looked at Sara in amusement, and he shook his head slightly as he said, “You’ve never had much contact with undercover agents, have you? I kept two Post Office boxes for correspondence: one she controlled that I used to contact her, and one I controlled that she could use to contact me. Mail to either was always forwarded to wherever we wanted to receive mail. We could fill in any address we wished whenever we wanted to change it. I never knew her identity, where she lived, or had any other way to contact her. She could drop out any time she wanted by simply not answering the postcard I sent her. And what makes you think she was Polish?”

“Nothing. I know a cleaning woman named Magdalena. She’s Polish. This card, was it a special card?” asked Sara, as an idea formed.

“Why should I tell you anything more than I already have? I’ll need to save something for when I speak to the NSS again,” said Lemko.

“If you answer their questions truthfully, you still won’t know what that’ll get you. If you help me, maybe I can keep you alive long enough to get to trial.”

Lemko hesitated for a minute before answering. He seemed to be calculating the risk of telling her more against the benefit of being able to get a public trial. “It was a picture postcard of Stockholm City Hall. I’d address it to her and name a day of the week and a time, as if we had already met there. That told her when we should meet in the coming week. We always met in the rose garden behind the City Hall, overlooking the water.”

The image of the postcard on the refrigerator flashed behind Sara’s eyes. “And when she wanted to meet with you?”

“The same thing, except she used the box number that I controlled,” said Lemko.

“So if you didn’t meet her this time, how did she give you the details you needed?”

“She just sent me a couple of pages to my Post Office box. Nothing more, just an address and some dates and times when she was sure I could find Hoffberg alone.”

“What kind of information did you give her on Hoffberg? I mean, she must have had access to every register in the country to be able to help you so quickly. And how would she be able to give you personal details about his habits?”

“I don’t know. Like I said, she was always very thorough. Exceptional, actually,” he said. “I…I just gave her Hoffberg’s name and asked her if she could help me get some background on him. She never knew what I was going to do with the information. I never told her about the, uhm, the torpedo.”

“A torpedo? Now what would make a torpedo worth killing for?”

“It wasn’t just any torpedo,” said Lemko. “Defence people call this kind of torpedo a Rocketfish.”

“Where did it come from?” Sara asked. He’d finally opened up, and she felt he could help her tie up the final threads of the case. His shoulders were hunched and he bent towards the table, resting his weight on his left forearm, his right hand cuffed to the table. He could have passed for any other middle-aged man in a crowd, and Sara began to understand the secret of his success. When she closed her eyes, even for a short while, it was difficult to recall what he looked like. It was as if he emanated a signal to everyone around him which invaded their brains and erased the image of his face.

“Where did it come from?” she asked again.

“Estonia,” he said, finally. “It was from Estonia.”

“So Estonia was in the torpedo-making business,” said Sara. Lemko pushed himself back, stopped by the handcuff that held him to the table, and she continued, “We never heard anything about that up here.”

“They didn’t actually build the torpedoes,” he said quietly, beginning to show signs of fatigue. “They were only involved in the final step, the manufacture and installation of the warhead. And the training for their use, of course. And no, it wasn’t common knowledge, Paldiski was kept a close secret,” said Lemko, confirming everything Hurtree had told her. “Up until the day the Russians left Estonia, the entire town was closed to anyone who didn’t work there or go to school there.”

“OK, Lemko, here’s what I want you to do.” Sara pushed a blank sheet of paper and a pen over to his side of the table. “I want you to write down on this paper whatever it is you would write if you were going to meet with this Magdalena person on Tuesday of next week. If it doesn’t work I’ll arrange for a special transport again, one that we won’t help you out of.”

Lemko looked up at her and then back at the sheet of paper in front of him. “I don’t have the postcard that I use when I contact her. You’ll need to buy one at the Central Train Station if it’s going to work. It looks something like this.” He drew a crude image of the view of Stockholm’s City Hall. Sara recognised it immediately from the postcard found in Hoffberg’s kitchen. Lemko then blocked off an area that approximated the size of a postcard and wrote,

Thanks for lunch last Tuesday.

Magdalena / S.

Box 4015

12522 Älvsjö

Sara took the paper from him when he’d finished and asked, “Just curious – why Älvsjö?”

“That’s the kind of question the NSS would ask,” he said, and he broke his blank stare. “It’s simple. When I travelled to Stockholm, I always booked a train ticket from southern Sweden, and at that time the train always stopped in Älvsjö before continuing into the city. It’s a small place and I was almost always the only one to get off, so I could see if I’d been followed. And there’s a fantastic little bakery just down from the train station and the Post Office. I always bought something there. Will she be arrested, my little Magdalena?”

“I don’t know yet.” Sara hoped her lie would remain undetected. “I’m only interested in talking to her at this point. But you’re sure you haven’t met with her this time?”

Lemko went silent again. Sara tried another question, something which had made her curious from the first night she’d seen him. This time she used his codename. “Your clothes, Schneller. Are you a real transvestite, or just good at disguises?”

He said nothing at first, then replied in a tired voice, “I was trained by one of the best. A man called Wolf. You might have heard of him.”

“Yes, actually I have,” said Sara.

“They taught us everything. How to dress, how to walk, how to put on make-up, how to flirt. Just everything. It was a very good school. And Markus, he always wore a long, black leather overcoat. I thought it looked very, well, fashionable, so I bought one too. I always liked the way it looked on me, regardless of whether I was dressed as a man or a woman.”

After that he went silent again. Her phone rang and she could see from the display it was Hurtree.

“Hi there, Sara. It’s me, Hurtree, and I’ve got a little problem.”

“John, I can’t talk right now.”

“Of course not,” he said. “If you could talk I wouldn’t have a problem. I think we should get together as soon as possible.”

Sara looked over at her prisoner, and saw he’d recognised Hurtree’s voice. He turned his face towards the wall as soon as he noticed she was looking at him.

“Like I said, John, I’m not in a place where I can talk. I’ll be in Stockholm late this afternoon. If you can come to my office I can see you then.”

“I’m in the reception of your building now. I’ll just sit here until I start growing mushrooms.”

“Look around for some fertiliser, we usually have some bullshit lying around. I love mushrooms.”

Lemko sat for several more minutes without saying a word after Sara put her cell phone in her pocket. Finally, he broke the silence. “I should have stopped that son-of-a-bitch when I had the chance.”

“So you weren’t the best of friends?” Sara was glad Lemko was talking again.

“He was the only one who knew what I looked like then. An occupational hazard I should have rectified.”

“You mean killed.”

“Yes, that’s what I said.”

“Have you ever thought about what he was thinking? I mean, there must have been times when he wanted to do the same to you, but he didn’t. The law didn’t let him.”

“Yes, of course. We could almost always count on Hurtree following the law instead of just using the opportunity to take a shot at us. It made life a lot easier. All we had to do was to keep hidden to avoid capture. It’s entirely different to keep hidden to avoid being shot.”

“Maybe we should ask our politicians to do something about that,” said Sara, more to herself than to him. “It’d be a lot easier for us if we had an even playing field.”

“I never killed a policeman. Ever.”

She recoiled at the intensity of his blue-eyed stare. She could hear he wasn’t lying. “Is that supposed to matter? What about all the other people you’ve killed? Don’t they count?”

“That was work. I never killed ordinary people. Just people who were a threat, like myself.”

“While we’re talking about killing, when you killed Hoffberg you used a gun. What happened to it?”

“Yes, I don’t like guns very much. Almost never use them. Magdalena wrote that the victim kept a gun in the garage if I needed it. It was in a shoebox on the workbench, a 38 special revolver. I left it there after I killed Hoffberg.”

“A shoebox?” Sara asked. “What colour was it?”

“Brown, I think, just a shoebox.”

“And you left the gun there before you left?”

“Yes, it’s always a dead giveaway to have a murder weapon on you if you’re searched later on.” Lemko was smiling again, a cruel, professional grimace.

“You sound like you know a lot about killing. And how did you manage to get Hoffberg to let you into the house? We found no signs of a struggle.”

Lemko’s voice became mechanical, a professional describing the tools of the trade. He described how, dressed as a female priest, he’d told Hoffberg that he was new to the parish, and about his commitment to world peace. Hoffberg had not only let him into the house, but had made the coffee that Lemko had used to drug him before carrying him into the garage for the interrogation.

“Now just get me to jail, little girl,” said Lemko, as he finished his description, then he became quiet again.

“Sorry, Lemko. They’re taking you to Kumla Prison today. What they do with you after that isn’t my problem.”

Sara felt the satisfaction of seeing almost all the pieces of the puzzle suddenly coming together. She watched Lemko’s face for telltale signs of lying, but if there was anything there she couldn’t see it.

She was sure now that the torpedo lay behind the death of Leo Hoffberg, and that both he and Martin Spimler were involved in placing it in the waters in the middle of Stockholm. She’d even uncovered the existence of a Cold War spy who’d worked in Parliament, a woman who had been able to help Lemko get details on Hoffberg so he could operate undisturbed. There was only one tiny fragment that needed to be added to make the picture complete: the identity of Magdalena.

Sara replayed in her mind the scene of the afternoon in the Hoffberg kitchen and watched as the postcard was bagged by the Forensics assistant on the day after the murder, and she heard Kristina Hoffberg’s voice as she handed over the piece of paper with the elusive cleaning woman named Magdalena’s telephone number written on it, the number that led to no one.

Sara sharpened her focus on Kristina Hoffberg, now sure that she could be Magdalena. What she needed to do was to find a way to draw Magdalena, whoever she was, out into the open, and she had already begun to plan the sting.

She wondered if Hurtree would be pleased by her plan, if he’d approve, and then she wondered how she’d be able to pull it off alone.

*

The staff in the Mission Control room in Chantilly was now on full alert, creating a slightly higher hum of activity. Instead of only one monitor watching the events outside of Stockholm there were now three, each with a different view, and the three Airmen behind the monitors talked to each other, tersely conveying a continuous update. A full bird colonel was behind the three Airmen, and he mediated the sum of events, directing them to provide more information when needed.

“What’s happening?” asked the colonel. “Someone said ‘explosion imminent’, and I don’t see any damn explosion.”

“Sorry, Colonel,” said the Airman at the centre monitor. “It was presumptive. It must have been a dud.”

“Where the fuck is that Rocketfish?” asked the colonel.

“There,” said an Airman, pointing at monitor one. “It’s on the C-130. They’re leapfrogging over the ridges near the border. They asked for help from the F-16s, but they…wait a minute. The Eagles just went to ten thousand feet and they’re locking missiles onto the Coaler. Look. The Coaler just turned back.”

“And no explosion?” asked the colonel again.

“No, sir,” said all three Airmen simultaneously.

“Thank God for that,” said the colonel. “Where the hell is that C-130?”

“It just crossed into Norway. Looks like the Coaler is headed for Russia,” said the first Airman. “It should be landing in Kaliningrad in, uh, about ninety minutes.”

“Let’s keep on top of this until the C-130 lands,” said the colonel. “Keep your eyes open for an explosion. It could still happen. And update everyone upstream.”

Chapter 25

The single light coming from the Swedish Prime Minister’s home was swallowed up by the murky Arctic night. Inside, the PM and his secretary sat in silence when a security guard informed them that Swedish radar had spotted the Coaler. It had caught up with the C-130.

It merely confirmed what he already knew after the conversation with the Russian PM, but it was always a disappointment for Sweden’s most powerful politician to discover there were people and events he couldn’t control. He began to look for a way to explain to the nation why great parts of the country had been made unlivable, and why people had not been evacuated to safety. There seemed to be no good explanation, and he began to sweat under the strain.

When a fax reported that the Coaler had turned at the Norwegian border before attacking the C-130, both the PM and the political secretary fell to their knees in prayer. A grave silence fell upon the room as they waited for news of the nuclear explosion. They waited several minutes. Finally the PM got up off his knees, looking around to see if anyone else had seen them.

“It must have exploded,” said the PM. “That’s why they can’t give us a report. They’re all dead, the whole town.”

“I’m not so sure,” said the political secretary. “We’re getting our information from two sources, and one of them is very far away from Mora, but with direct observation capabilities. If it had exploded I’m sure we’d have been informed by now.”

“Then why didn’t it explode?”

“We were praying for a miracle.”

“Well, it appears we got one. Let’s get busy drafting some press releases for three scenarios, each one being able to explain events depending upon how much information has been leaked to the press.”

*

Sara parked her car in the underground parking lot at the National Police Offices in Stockholm. She went straight to the reception area where Hurtree sat waiting. He was leafing through a police union magazine as the security gate hissed behind her.

“Have you already learned Swedish?” asked Sara. “Maybe you can apply for a job.”

“I don’t work anymore,” said Hurtree. “I just help out my friends. And it’s getting me into trouble, so I might need your help.”

“OK, I have to go to the Central Train Station. They have a good restaurant there and I have to buy a postcard. You can explain your problem on the way.”

Hurtree told Sara he’d been interviewed by Ekman after Lemko had been kidnapped. Ekman wanted to know what he knew about it.

“Ekman told me I’d worn out my welcome, that I’d pushed my nose into matters that didn’t concern me, and he took my passport.”

Sara shook her head as she paid for the postcard of City Hall matching the one she’d seen in Kristina Hoffberg’s kitchen.

“He hasn’t given it back yet and I’m a little worried about that,” continued Hurtree over the sound of loudspeakers announcing train departures and arrivals. “They don’t want me here, that’s obvious, but I can’t leave without my passport. Do you have any idea what’s going on?”

“They’re just a little pissed off that you were involved in solving this case, that’s all.” Sara asked for an English menu at the restaurant. “Was there anything else they hassled you with?”

“No, just a bunch of questions about how I knew where Schneller lived and how I knew he could be a cross-dresser in the field. I told Ekman he could get all that information from my old files and gave him Peters’ address. Funny, he seemed to know about Peters already.”

“So if you can’t leave yet, why not take some time out for a Stockholm holiday? It’ll be Christmas soon and it’s a pretty place in winter. I’ll show you around tomorrow afternoon if you want.”

“Yeah, I’d like that,” he said, and they ordered their lunches, which arrived quickly.

“Have you ever heard of someone called Magdalena?” Hurtree asked between bites. “Ekman asked me if I knew anything about her and it seemed important to him.”

“Well?” Sara diverted her eyes and looked at her plate as she asked, “Did you?”

“No. Only the one in the Bible. Never knew anyone else by that name.”

He watched as Sara took out the paper Schneller had signed the day before, and he stopped eating as she continued to make a careful forgery of his handwriting.

“There,” said Sara, “that should do it. On Tuesday I should be able to finally figure out what this case is all about.”

Hurtree fumbled around for his wallet, but Sara waved him off and paid for their lunches. They set a time for their meeting the following day, and she saw him disappear into the crowd at the Central Station as he went back to his hotel.

She popped the postcard into the yellow collection box on her way back to the office. She took the long way back to her office, crossing over King’s Bridge to go by Cantsten’s office.

*

Cantsten looked up from her reading, and Sara thought she saw something vaguely friendly behind her glasses.

“You’ve got people talking about you,” said Cantsten.

“Yeah, some people talk, others do. I’d like your help in putting Lemko on trial for Hoffberg’s murder. We’ve got a confession, some pretty good technical evidence and something we can interpret as an escape attempt. Whadda you say? Will you help me?”

“And Ekman?” asked Cantsten. “He’s made it clear they’re the ones who are going to investigate Lemko. You were supposed to let go of it.”

“Yeah, well, that would have meant letting him out of the country. I don’t let murderers go.”

“Did you know they call you the Terrier?”

“Ever since I bit my judo instructor at the police academy. Things got kind of intense during training,” said Sara. “Why do they call you Icer?”

Cantsten hesitated for a stretched second and then said softly, “Icer. I drink iced coffee when it’s hot. I dated an American for a while. The iced coffee habit stuck. He didn’t. So why the rush to get into trouble? Is Lemko worth it?”

“He’s a murderer. My job is to put people like him behind bars. Besides, I promised him a trial.”

“Was he worried about that? Getting a trial?”

“Yeah, he was. He was concerned about getting one.”

“OK, I’ll have him arraigned on Monday. Make sure you get his file over to me early in the morning so I can sound intelligent when I talk to the judge. Where is he now?”

“He’s in a holding cell in Kumla. I think he should be isolated before the trial.”

“I’ll arrange it.” Cantsten picked up the phone. “Anything else?”

“Yeah, I think I’ll be able to arrest his accomplice on Tuesday. Wanna be there?”

Cantsten seemed to become a whole new person. “Where and when?”

“City Hall, Tuesday lunchtime,” Sara said.

“Meet you there,” said Cantsten.

*

Sunday started as another attempt at trying to be normal in an abnormal world. Sara still couldn’t understand how her grandmother could just die and not be there to help as she’d always done before. There were papers to sign that had piled up on the hallway floor just under the mail slot in the door, bills to be paid at the end of the month and several pounds of advertisements for everything from eggs to chickens, TVs to toasters, and a notice that two flats in the house where she lived were being put up for sale in the current month.

Sara sat on the floor, legs crossed, listening to her heartbeat as she tried to slow it down so she could enter her own special place. When the weekend was over it’d be a difficult Monday, another day of trying to be the best in the class and all the time knowing whatever she did, it wouldn’t be enough.

Sara gave up her meditation when she noticed her concentration was broken by a pain in her hip that spread down her right leg. Sciatica again, her old friend from too little exercise and missing out on the physical therapy she’d been going to after an accident in judo class at the academy. She made a note to ask her yoga teacher if there was a position to alleviate the problem.

The wind howled outside and the temperature had dropped to well below minus five. Birds pecked at her windows, hoping she’d throw out a few crumbs before they froze to feathers on a stick. It was a tough time to be alive in Sweden, the beginning of another winter; a reminder that she’d promised herself a life in a warmer climate as a teenager.

As she waited for the water to boil for a cup of green tea, Hurtree’s call interrupted the quiet of the morning. He wanted to meet in a warm place, so she suggested the Central Train Station, where it was warm and where they could get to just about anywhere in a hurry.

*

Hurtree whistled from above as she walked from the local train platform into the Central Train Station, and he peered down through the hole in the ceiling above her.

He was standing at the railing of the ‘spittoon’, a hole in the ground floor that gave visual access to traffic on the first underground level below.

“Stay where you are, I’ll be right up.” She vaulted up the stairs.

As she approached Hurtree she could see he was on the phone, and seemed to be troubled.

“I guess you’ve heard by now Schneller is back in custody,” Hurtree blurted into his phone.

Captain Peters’ voice was cold and angry. “Yeah, I heard. I’ve been trying to call and chew you out. From what I heard, your girl scout cop almost lost him. If it hadn’t been for the Swedish NSS he’d be back in Germany by now.”

“Don’t believe everything you hear, Charlie,” said Hurtree, waving to Sara as she came closer. “I was there when Schneller got caught the first time. I saw it. If it hadn’t been for her, he’d have been way beyond Germany. They screwed up when they surrounded the house. Never figured he’d have an escape route to take him beyond their perimeter. Anyway, she was the one who got him. I helped a little, but I don’t count. And she was the one that caught him again when he’d been kidnapped. I hope that wasn’t our bunch at work.”

“No,” replied Captain Peters, “at least not that I know of. We don’t get to do that kind of stuff, you know that. Anyway, I’m glad to hear he’s back in the slammer again. Can you go home now? You’ve done what you were supposed to do, and you’re making waves.”

“I’m only a tourist, Charlie. I’ll be home soon. Count on it.”

“Yeah, right. As usual.”

Hurtree turned off his phone. He followed Sara into an Irish sports bar at one end of the train station. He ordered a Guinness and she went for green tea.

“So when do you think I’ll get my passport back?” he asked as he tapped his Guinness with his fingernails, convinced he could speed up the bubbles’ rise to the thick, brown foam at the top.

“I can talk to Ekman tomorrow,” Sara said. “Or what’s more likely, he’ll be talking to me. I’m in trouble too, you know.”

“How can you be in trouble when you managed to catch that guy before he got out of the country? Twice.”

“Yeah, I know, but I didn’t follow the book and some of the bosses at work think the book is more important than the result. I’m sure you had bosses like that when you were working.”

“No, actually not. At least I never noticed it. I just did the job. Sometimes it was easy, sometimes not, but I never felt like I had someone who jerked me around, told me not to catch a bad guy, no, that never happened. The book was always there, and if you didn’t follow it you were out, it was that simple. But if I looked hard I could always find little grey areas where I could make my own decisions. That’s what I did, anyway.”

“It doesn’t happen that way over here. We have a saying: ‘What isn’t forbidden is compulsory.’ We don’t have much room to wiggle.”

“Yeah, I didn’t get much wiggle room talking to Ekman,” he said. “It was like the first time I met you guys a few years ago. All I could do was to listen to his questions to figure out what he wouldn’t tell me. If I do that today I’d say you guys are trying to finally follow up this Schneller guy and what he was doing up here all those years. Right?”

“I can’t tell you,” Sara said, with a little chuckle. “Ask Ekman. All I’m trying to do is solve a murder case, and I’ve almost got it in the bag.”

“Almost?”

“Yeah, there’s one final loose end. I’ve got an accomplice to catch. A woman who gave Lemko what he needed to know to kill Hoffberg. I hope to take her into custody on Tuesday.” And she told Hurtree what Lemko had said on the way up to Stockholm on Friday.

“Well, I’ll give you one thing, little girl. You never give up. Reminds me a little of myself when I was working.”

“And even after. I remember you solving a case that had been unsolved for more than forty years.”

“Yeah, maybe that’s what makes it so much easier when I’m over here. I can’t find much of that over there in the States anymore. We had it once, at least when I was growing up, but it got lost. No one there has the guts to do anything now. They sit around and bitch about how much more they need, instead of trying to figure out what they need to do.” He took a long sip at what was left of the dark brew. “I even think about moving over here once in a while. Your pensioners seem to have a better deal than I’m getting back at home.”

“Maybe you should take a good look at the other shore before you try to leap across the creek, John. I get tired of this place sometimes: the bundling up, the smell of wet wool on the radiator as my gloves dry out. I’ve even considered applying for work at Europol and moving to some warm country in Europe. I mean, there must be crooks there too.”

Sara looked across at the old man on the other side of the table. He looked like a father, or grandfather, at least someone she could trust. “Anyway, before you go maybe you can help me one more time. You’ve been chasing bad guys a lot longer than I, so maybe you could tell me what to do so I don’t lose her on Tuesday.”

“Sure, I’ll help. But I have a condition.”

Sara already knew it.

“I need to have my passport back, and I don’t want any more hassles from Ekman.”

“Sorry,” she said, “Ekman makes his own rules. But if you want to help you can come with me right now. I’m going to check out the place where the accomplice will show up on Tuesday.”

They buttoned up their coats and walked over the bridge to City Hall. The gate was still open into the inner square where they got some relief from the wind as they stood in the middle of the courtyard.

“This is where the city government sits when they make their decisions,” Sara said, pointing to the building surrounding them. “There’s a tourist store just to the right of the entrance, and that’s an entrance to a restaurant off to the left.”

“Where’s your mark supposed to meet her contact?” Hurtree asked.

“Through here.” They continued out towards the Bay of Knights in front of them. “There, off to the right. There’s a garden there, they call it the Zodiac Labyrinth Garden. The architect for this place liked anything to do with the zodiac. They tell me you can find the entire set of zodiac symbols in the paving stones around that little maze of boxwood bushes.”

“They look just like chopped-down bushes to me. Those paving stones are so covered with snow and ice it’s hard to see symbols at all,” said Hurtree. “And frankly, I wouldn’t know a zodiac symbol if it bit me in the ass. But there is one thing. I’d never stand out here, so exposed and with nowhere to run. I’d have to have at least two ways out. Out here I’m boxed in.”

“But she’ll have to see someone that looks like Lemko to feel safe enough to get to where we’re standing. How do I do that?”

“I don’t think he’d be out there either. I think he’d find a place where he could mix with people if necessary and still have two ways to get out.”

“Like over there?” Sara asked, as she pointed to a place where the wall receded to create an outdoor room with only two walls; an alcove that gave shelter from the wind and rain and provided a way to either run out to the street directly, or back through the main entrance. A large, blue ornamental statue of a Swedish Dala horse stood under the roof near the inside corner, creating a place where someone could hide, but blend in easily with the bands of tourists that grouped to have their pictures taken as they posed in front of the landmark.

“Exactly here,” said Hurtree, as he gave the horse a pat on its hindquarters. “This is where Schneller would stand and wait.”

“Let’s try it out,” she said, and went to the corner of the alcove. She looked to the right and could see anyone approaching from that angle. With only a slight movement of her head she had a complete view of anyone coming from the left. “This is it. All I need now is the appropriate clothing.”

“You’re not gonna do this alone, are you?”

“No, no,” Sara laughed. “We don’t get to be heroes over here like you American cops. I’ll have at least half a dozen men scattered around the place to help me get her, once I know who she is.”

“And how will you know who she is?” he asked.

It was a good point. Sara would have to get Magdalena to identify herself. She thought about using Lemko, but the risk of losing him was way too large. Any attempts to restrict entry would be a dead giveaway.

She hesitated, then said, “I’ll figure it out.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you will,” said Hurtree as they walked back to the Central Station.

“Have you had any contact with your army buddies?” she asked.

“Yeah, Peters told me to go home,” said Hurtree.

“Did they ever give you any background on the torpedo?”

“He only said that we knew about a weapons shipment from Estonia which had been on board the MS Sally. He put a man there to keep an eye on the shipment, but it didn’t help. From what we could figure out, someone opened the front bow visor and it got caught in a wave and just broke off. Bye-bye, ship.”

“What happened to your guy on board?” Sara asked.

“He drowned,” said Hurtree. He looked out towards the Baltic for an explanation.

“I’m sorry. Did you know him?”

“No. From what I heard, he was just a young man that was part of the team sometimes. He started just after I left. I’m sure he’d have been a good cop if he’d lived. I went out to the monument before I left for Tallinn to put a flower next to his name. It’s probably a ridiculous thing to do. His body’s not even there, but I guess someone has to thank him for his sacrifice.”

They went back into the sports bar and ordered hot coffee and tea to warm up.

“Do you ever feel alone, Hurtree?” asked Sara. “I mean, you don’t seem to talk about other people, except in the past tense. What about it – do you have a bunch of friends you haven’t told me about?”

He cocked his head to one side, hiding his face, while still being able to monitor her expression. “I don’t need many people, Sara. Never have,” he said. “I got used to being alone a long time ago. It was too much trouble to make the effort. The job kept getting in the way. Everyone I knew who worked in our line of work and was married…yeah, they ended up divorced. Life is too short for grief, and that’s what you get when you get too close to people.”

“You’re just feeling sorry for yourself.”

“Yeah? Maybe so. Anyway, I think being alone is easier in the winter, when everything is bare and most people seem to be too busy keeping warm to give each other problems. Everyone you see looks as lonely as you feel. Anyway, being alone isn’t something to be afraid of, it’s another way to be human. We all need others, it’s just that some need to have people listen to them when they talk to the wall. Do you like talking to the wall too?”

“Screw you, Hurtree,” said Sara. “You’re not much help at all right now.”

“You’re edgy and pissed off. Strange. You should be out celebrating your successes, and here you are, freezing your butt off, talking to an ancient relic like me. I guess it’s time for me to get back to the hotel.”

Sara stared into her tea. The leaves inside the teabag at the bottom of the cup remained an unreadable soggy brown blob. “My grandmother died. She was my only…the only person I could trust. Then she just dies. And I wasn’t there for her. I feel like shit, John.”

Hurtree stretched his arm across the table to take Sara’s hand. “Yeah. I thought it was something like that. Here’s what I think. You’ve forgotten how to be busy living your own life. Imagine how good you’d be in a private life where you concentrated on that as much as you do on work.”

“You’re beginning to sound like my grandmother.” Sara’s voice dropped. “The funeral is next week. Could you be there? I mean, could you stay for that? For me?”

“You bet I can,” said Hurtree. “Anyway, where can I go? Ekman still has my passport.”

“I’ll talk to him. Sorry I’m such a wreck, John. Hey, before you go, there’s something strange about the victim’s wife I can’t get out of my head. It’s nothing concrete, something Lemko said when I questioned him yesterday. He shot Hoffberg with a pistol that he’d been told would be available to him in the garage, if he needed it.”

“Who told him that?” asked Hurtree.

“This woman, Magdalena, the one who gave him Hoffberg’s address and the times when he’d be alone.”

“Yeah? Pretty specific information, I’d say.”

“It sure is. And Lemko told me he put the pistol back in the box after shooting Hoffberg.” Sara was getting an idea as she spoke, and it seemed to run back and forth between other thoughts in her mind, making it difficult for her to know which words would pop out first.

Hurtree sat sipping his coffee, watching her like a father does when his daughter discovers something obvious for the first time; the joy of watching discovery, that first step in the race for the rest of your life.

“I have some photos on my phone,” Sara said, pulling it out and firing it up. “That box should be visible somewhere.”

“Maybe. If you’re lucky. Maybe your forensic team took it with them.”

“No, something like a murder weapon wouldn’t be left out. It would’ve been on the top of the list of items in their report, and I’d have been informed immediately,” Sara replied. She began flipping through the images from the day of the murder, one more time. “It’s not here. There’s no box on the workbench where Schneller said he put the gun. There’s no box.”

Hurtree thought he could hear the question forming in her mind, and coaxed, “Think outside the box, Sara. Who was there before you?”

“Lemko, the wife who called it in, and the first officer on the scene.” Sara could see from the look on Hurtree’s face that she’d just answered her own unspoken question. “The wife! It’s either her or she’s working together with this Magdalena woman. One of them must have removed the gun. That’s it!”

“Yeah, maybe. It usually is the spouse, you know. But you’ve still got a lot of loose ends to tie up. I’d have a good look at the forensic evidence, then talk to her as soon as I could. But that’s only me.”

“Hurtree, you’re a genius. How did you make me figure all this out?”

“Me? I didn’t do anything except maybe be the wall you bounced ideas off. Something anyone can do.”

“No, not just anyone, Hurtree. You’re special. Really old, grumpy most of the time, but very special.”

“There must be a lot you don’t know about me, if you think that. Can I buy some flowers here? I think I’ll go by the monument again and talk to someone else’s wall.”

When he’d paid for his bouquet he turned and gave Sara a bear hug that nearly broke a rib.

“Be careful during your sting on Tuesday. You take care, little one,” he said as they parted company. She watched him as he walked away from her, dangling the white paper wrapping in his right hand.

Hurtree looked like any other senior on his way to a funeral, his pace slow and measured. Sara watched as he exited through the revolving door to leave the Central Station, hoping he’d turn so she could wave at him one last time, but he continued out the door and never looked back. She hoped he wouldn’t change his mind about coming to her grandmother’s funeral next week. She watched him disappear towards the bus stop. A gust of wind made her eyes water a little.

The rest of the day was uneventful, and the phone call from Sara’s mother ended up with both of them hanging up on each other at the same time. Nothing like a family feud to get your blood pumping.

*

Sara was glad to hear the alarm on Monday morning. At work before anyone else had arrived, she filed the report that Sven wanted and left some details in an email to Cantsten that would help her prepare Lemko’s arraignment. Then she walked around the block to the NSS wing to wait for Ekman. He was already there.

“I thought I told you to lay off the Lemko case. Cantsten filed an emergency hearing for today, and she could make an even greater mess of this. What in the hell did you think you were doing?”

“Trying to bring a criminal to justice, that’s all.”

“That was my case,” said Ekman. “Why didn’t you tell me what I needed to know so I could stop him at the ferry?”

“At the time, I wasn’t sure he’d be there. It was just a hunch. I didn’t want to trouble you with my hunches. I was afraid I, uh…actually, I was afraid of you, sir.”

“Me?” said Ekman. “Who could be afraid of me? That means you knew you were doing something wrong.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Sara said. “I was just afraid of you. You have a reputation, sir.”

He spun around from the window to face her, his ears flaming and his eyes opened much wider than necessary. “You may have caused an international incident because of your meddling. When you’re told to do something, just do it. I need to know if Lemko said anything to you when you questioned him. Have you filed a report?”

“Yes, sir, I did. He didn’t talk much. Spent most of the time staring at the table. He told me that he found the gun in a shoebox in the garage. He’d been told by his contact that it’d be there if he needed it. He said he put it back in the box after shooting Hoffberg. I took a couple of pictures with my phone when I got there, but I can’t see any shoebox. We should’ve heard something from Forensics if it’d been there when they went through the crime scene, but it wasn’t mentioned. My bet is that it was Hoffberg’s wife that removed it. I think she’s Lemko’s contact, the Magdalena woman he used to get details about Hoffberg. Oh, and he was trying to find the location of the torpedo. He was working for someone in Estonia, otherwise that’s about it.”

Ekman sat down behind his desk and opened a binder marked Hoffberg, and flipped through to a section that included the summary of the forensic report. He read through it carefully and Sara wondered what to do next.

She cleared her throat to remind him that she was still in front of him, and he motioned for her to sit down as he continued reading. Several minutes went by. He rubbed his temples as he concentrated on the file, shook his head a couple of times, then looked up when he finished and smiled. It was so unusual that Sara smiled back, then caught herself as she realised that a smile from Ekman could also mean trouble.

“OK,” he said, “I give up. I need you to join the team. Sound interesting?”

“Definitely,” Sara said, and fought back an urge to set conditions. “What can I do?”

“Be spontaneous. Start at the beginning and tell me who you think killed Hoffberg and why.”

“I think the murderer is Schneller, Lemko, or whatever we’re supposed to call him,” Sara said. “He admitted to it, and he described things about the crime scene only the murderer would know, like the two shots to the chest. I don’t believe what he said first about just liking it. He told me it was a contract, he was working for someone in Estonia who wanted the torpedo back. I think the torture got out of hand and Hoffberg died during the shock therapy. He said he put the two bullets in Hoffberg’s chest to make one hundred per cent certain he wouldn’t tell anyone else about the torpedo.”

“And what about his wife? Why do you think she’s involved?”

“I had a feeling about her very early on. Lemko had contact with someone called Magdalena, someone he’d used before during his Stasi days, and this woman gave him detailed information about Hoffberg’s address and habits. She told him about the pistol he could find in the garage. How else could she know about that? And now the gun is missing, if I’m to believe Lemko, which may or may not be a good idea. Everything would point to Magdalena having some kind of contact with the wife. Hell, the wife could be Magdalena.”

“That seems reasonable.” Ekman stroked his chin and became Rubberlips, trying to contain the little dance his mouth had begun. “Did Lemko tell you anything about Magdalena’s identity? We’ve known of her existence for years, but there was no way we could ever identify her.”

“Lemko set it up so well, he’s very good at his job,” Sara said. “They used two Post Office boxes in Älvsjö to make contact with each other. They both had mail forwarded to their home addresses, so they never had direct contact with each other. He told me the box number he used to contact her and I’ll ring the Post Office as soon as I can. I sent Magdalena a postcard over the weekend. I got Lemko to tell me the protocol he used, and told her he wanted to meet her tomorrow at City Hall, lunchtime, where they usually met before.”

“Perfect,” said Ekman, “fucking perfect. How did you get him to reveal the protocol?”

“I promised him a trial,” said Sara. “He seemed to be concerned about that.”

Ekman’s lips twitched a little before he asked, “What was the box number they used?”

“Box 4015,” Sara said.

He jotted it down and picked up the phone. It took him only minutes to find out he’d need a formal letter to get the forwarding address released.

Ekman pushed the notepaper with the bureaucrat’s name and telephone number on it over to Sara. “Get Cantsten to write a letter demanding that they release the forwarding address. If Magdalena decides to do a runner tomorrow instead of showing up for your meeting, we’ll at least know who to look for.”

Sara was leaving his office when he continued, “When you get back I want you to come in and meet the rest of the team. We’ll have to discuss plans for your sting tomorrow. Does anyone else know about this?”

“No,” Sara said, before she realised she’d already told Hurtree about it. What the hell, he’s probably already on the way back home. “No one on the team at the NBI knows anything. Not even Sven.”

“Good,” said Ekman. “Keep it that way. I’ll fill Sven in on a need-to-know basis. Police stations have so many leaks, we’ll be lucky if we can do the arrest without having the entire press corps standing there filming it and interviewing our suspect.” Ekman raised his voice to mimic the voice of a well-known female TV reporter. “And what’s it feel like to be arrested for complicity in a murder?”

Sara followed up and pitched hers to sound like the village idiot. “It’s society’s fault. I didn’t get enough attention at the day-care centre when I was a child.”

*

In the morning she phoned Sven and Ekman and explained she had to pick up her disguise, a black leather overcoat to make her look like Lemko. She went to a shop near the Central Train Station and found one almost immediately. The dizzy shop clerk snuck a free entry ticket to a Leather/S&M club across town into the bag as she made up the package. Sara went to the shop next door and bought a very masculine Russian fur hat. Her disguise was now complete.

She put everything on when she got to work and walked into Sven’s office. “What do you think?” she asked as she did a fashion-show twirl in front of his desk.

“You should hold your arms differently,” he said in a monotonous voice. “You’re moving too much like a woman. But if you just stand still over there and turn your back to me…,” he said again, becoming interested. “There. Keep your chin down. Good. That works. Where did you get the outfit?”

“I bought it this morning. I’ll take everything back this afternoon after I’m done with them. I still have the receipts, so it won’t cost the department anything.”

“No,” said Sven, “I mean, where did you buy the overcoat? I like it. I may pick one up after work.”

“They give you a free ticket to an S&M club if you ask nicely.”

“Ekman told me about the sting you’re going to do today. I hope this works, because if it doesn’t, I’m not sure I can keep your snowball from melting in the heat of what will follow. Are you sure about her showing up?”

“No, boss. No, I’m not sure. I mean, I’ve prepared for the worst in case she does show up, but how could I prepare for her not showing up?”

“The forwarding address?” he asked.

“I’ve got Robert working on it while I’m at City Hall,” Sara said.

“OK, just make sure that you don’t get shot,” said Sven. “This woman may not like the idea of being taken into custody. Are you armed?”

“Sure,” she said, holding up her P228 nine-mil Sig Sauer. “This’ll at least give her a pain in the ass if she tries to run.”

“Yeah, right,” said Sven. They both knew that their service ammunition was good enough to make puncture wounds and not much more.

Just before she left to meet Ekman she made one final attempt to call Kristina Hoffberg. At first there was no answer, then the call was diverted to another number and Sara heard a cell phone crackle through the ether.

“Hello, it’s Kristina.”

“Hello, Kristina, this is Sara Markham from the police. You remember me – I’m investigating your husband’s murder?”

“Oh yes, of course. I hope you’ve found whoever did it.”

Sara kept her on a short leash. “We’re not sure, Kristina. These investigations can take a long time. I was wondering if you could help me with something tomorrow. Just a few questions, if you have time.”

“Of course, Sara, I’ll do anything to help,” said Kristina Hoffberg, and they set a time for her visit after lunch the following day.

As they said goodbye, Sara heard the bell from the clock in the tower of the German Church in the Old City strike eleven somewhere near Kristina. She must be standing somewhere in central Stockholm, Sara thought, as she hurried to get her disguise packed so she could get into place.

Ekman was waiting impatiently outside her door when she came out of her office. “Let’s roll,” he said, then, “are you going like that? I thought you were going to wear some kind of leather overcoat.”

“I am,” Sara held up the plastic shopping bag. “I want to put this on when I get into place. I don’t want to take the chance that she’s already in the garden somewhere, waiting for Lemko to show up. If she sees my face in this disguise then it won’t work.”

“I’ll let you run this. Don’t screw it up. I want this woman in custody.”

“Me too. Don’t worry.”

Later on Sara would look back on this moment and ask herself how she could be so sure of anything, how she could’ve been so naïve she actually wasn’t worrying. She thought she had everything under control; the future was going to play itself out as she had imagined it. Ekman wasn’t so sure.

“It’s you not being worried that worries me most,” he said as he dropped her off in front of the Seraphim Hospital, across the street from City Hall. “The rest of the team is already in place. Check your communications unit as soon as you can. Be careful what you say out loud – you’ve got a decoy unit, so it’s got an open mic. Every noise you make gets broadcast to the team, down to the last fart.”

Sara clamped her teeth together and got out of the car.

“Keep your mind focused on Magdalena,” said Ekman. He pulled away from the kerb to park beyond where the tourist buses were parked.

Chapter 26

Sara crossed the street to be immediately engulfed by a group of tourists as they disembarked from their bus. There were at least fifty of them, all ages, all short and all wearing some kind of down coat, making them look like round, fat little toys that could walk.

She stood close to them as they assembled into a cohesive group, all turning at the same time in response to some hidden communication. One of the women approached Sara, gestured that she wanted her to take a picture of her group of friends. Sara’s first reaction was to refuse, but then she saw it as an opportunity to join them. She would gain access to the corner of the alcove by pretending to be in their company. Sara scrunched down, trying to shrink as they walked by the plastic tent the NSS had erected to hide the two men in blue overalls with shovels in their hands and pistols in their pockets. As she walked past she looked inside the tent and could see Cantsten standing well to the back, wildly out of place in her blue overcoat and a blue woollen cap covering her blonde hair, stamping her high-heeled boots on the frozen soil. Sara turned away when she thought she saw a discreet wave from Cantsten; she didn’t need the cheering section, she needed to focus totally on what was about to happen.

They assembled at the Dala horse like every band of tourists Sara had ever seen, and busied themselves taking each other’s pictures. Sara helped another trio, and was included by an older couple that asked her to pose with their daughter. She tried to become even smaller when the tour leader arrived with their tickets. He still had a few tickets in his hand when he got to where Sara was standing and she was prepared to decline; she tried to imagine some phrase in Japanese which would explain that she wasn’t part of the tour. It wasn’t necessary – the tour leader skipped over Sara as if she’d suddenly become invisible and then they were gone, leaving her alone in the corner of the alcove.

Sara ducked down behind the statue of the horse, pulled out the leather overcoat and fur hat and quickly donned them. She turned her face to the corner, backing out towards the steps where she’d be more visible from across the bay. The waiting time had come.

Sara popped in the earwig, concealing it under her hair. “OK, guys, this is your decoy, the ugly duckling. I’m in place. I hope I’m not alone.”

“Blue one here,” said the coordinator. “Everyone’s in place. You’ve got two men in the plastic tent off where you came in, and a man out near the main entrance will report any single woman entering from the side. A clerk in the book shop will tell us if there’re any leftovers from tour groups when they leave. You probably saw the two black vans parked on Hantverkar Street – one of them is full of backup. I’m up in a hall overlooking Citizen’s Square and I can’t see you. Actually, no one can see you when you’re standing in the corner. If you walk out to the steps our men in the plastic tent can see you, but only when they look outside, which they shouldn’t do too often, so let us know what’s happening.”

“I hear you, blue one. Is there anyone who can bring me a portable stove? I’m freezing my rear off out here.”

“Shut up and focus, decoy.”

“Roger, blue one. Quack, quack.”

The cold crawled up through the soles of Sara’s flat-soled leather boots, and she wished she’d worn double socks and long johns. The wind whistled musical sounds as it whipped around the corner of the alcove.

She peeked out across the lake, felt like she was being observed, and she wondered if Magdalena had been looking at her from the other side. Sara did a little dance to keep her feet from freezing to the flat stones and backed out closer to the edge so she’d be visible from as many vantage points as possible.

She squinted out to her right, towards the Old City, the open museum which made Stockholm an international tourist attraction, with buildings dating well into medieval centuries and a church housing the mouldering bodies of almost all of Sweden’s deceased regents. She’d be visible from a lot of places out there; maybe Slussen, where you could always buy alcohol when Systemet, the state liquor stores were closed. Sara’s mind wandered for a minute, and she wondered why getting drunk was the national pastime and complaining about drunken neighbours came in as a close second. She sometimes wondered how it was possible the state made so much money off the bad habits of its citizens, in spite of all their smuggling and bootleg distilleries in the kitchen. Slussen would be a good place for Magdalena to wait.

At Slussen, nine hundred yards across the water from City Hall, Magdalena was standing at a bus stop with a clear view of the Zodiac Labyrinth Garden behind City Hall. She glanced at her watch, then noticed movement on the other side of the bay. She took up her binoculars to view a group of tourists walking from their bus to fill the garden as the tour leader went into the book shop to arrange their tickets.

She could see no sign of Schneller, and she rummaged in her purse for the two train tickets to Copenhagen. The postcard hadn’t revealed anything about the reason for his need to meet with her, but she knew it must mean he was being pursued so she’d made all the necessary arrangements. They’d have a very short window in which to leave the country, but once in Denmark they could disappear in separate directions without leaving a trace behind them. He wouldn’t even need one of his many passports to get out of Sweden or into Denmark.

Bus doors opened behind her and a young mother with a pram struggled to get her twins off the bus. Magdalena turned, took hold of the frame and both women lifted it to street level.

“Thanks so very much,” said the young woman, adjusting her knitted cap before continuing.

I wonder what life would have been like if I’d had children? thought Magdalena, and for a brief moment she allowed emotion to cloud her professional resolve. The moment didn’t last and she responded, “Yeah, whatever,” in reply, turning back to the view of City Hall with her binoculars.

She saw the tourists had become a flock of short, grey and brown overcoats waddling after their tour leader towards the opening that led to the main entrance of City Hall. She also saw Schneller wasn’t among them. She panned her binoculars a few degrees back to the Zodiac Labyrinth and there, under an alcove sheltering a blue Dala horse, she made out a figure dressed in a black leather overcoat, with a light brown Russian hat.

Schneller. She was sure of it. She walked over to the bus stop just below the Katarina Elevator to take the next number three bus to Karolinska Hospital. She’d be stopping outside City Hall in about eight minutes.

*

Mälar Square, 12.18 Magdalena stood in the aisle of the bus, her duffel bag resting heavily on her shoulder. It was the lunch hour, and finding a seat at this time of day had been difficult. She knew this part of the city well. Her first job was as a document specialist at Parliament. She’d applied on the basis of her excellent results at university; had been accepted in spite of never having been organised in any political party. She wasn’t a relative of or acquainted with any current politician, but she was capable, intelligent and beautiful. More importantly, she knew how to manipulate men.

Magdalena was a believer in the power of the written word. All progress since the beginning of civilisation had been dependent on the ability to produce and reproduce words that could be distributed from one person to another. Words had become a lexicographical virus, a way to change the structure of an entire generation just by injecting an idea at the right time and place.

In the course of her vocational training she’d learned that most of the time, the written words that steered her government were working in the service of powers much stronger than that of capitalism – not just the banks, not just the captains of industry, not just the owners of the major resources, not just the purveyors of the press which still tried to be called free. These words steered the might of the mightiest of nations, controlling the price of eggs and milk, bread and meat, including the power over life and death. She’d also discovered voters were valued little more than cattle to be herded into the balloting corral on Election Day, and left to feed on their own before and after the milking. It left her disillusioned, and made her easy prey to someone like Schneller, who could weave his own threads of logic into a fabric covering the lie of his intentions.

It was 12.19, and she looked around at the square in the Old City as the bus stopped to pick up passengers. An older woman got off, dressed in black and wearing a black shawl that concealed her entire face except her eyes.

*

Sara stamped the paving stones beneath her boots to get some warm blood down to her toes, and attracted the attention of a pair of very old Americans, him with a walking stick and her with a head of bright copper-coloured hair. Sara smiled at them as they walked by, confident they didn’t fit the age group for her suspect. Behind them she saw a middle-aged man in a short leather jacket walk out to the water’s edge, and noticed that he turned his head to look at her every third step.

“Blue one, do we have a target out near the water, or is that one of our own clowns?” Almost immediately the man stopped and turned. “Blue one, can you ask Elvis to find somewhere else to stand? He might as well wear his uniform.” The man walked quickly past her, scowling as he entered the plastic tent to join the two other officers and Cantsten.

“Thanks, blue one,” said Sara. “I’m wondering if this was such a good idea.”

“Focus,” said the controller.

*

Knights House Square, 12.20. The bus had turned the corner after passing the High Court. The garish House of Nobles was now behind Magdalena on the left, its poisonous green copper roof spattered with assorted statues, indicating to one and all that this building housed the meetings of men and women of power, demanding the knowledge of Latin of anyone wishing to decipher the message that had been engraved on it in large gold lettering.

This was an area rich in Swedish history, but with very little left of the squalid homes of the majority, the poor whose back-breaking labour had built these wonderful buildings. The dwellings of the poor had been destroyed as the city grew, and with few exceptions could only be imagined by looking at old maps. Stockholm had been like every other major European city: a collection of marvellous stone buildings and cemeteries filled with the bodies of those hopeful, wretched poor who’d helped build them. It was also a city with street names that described for posterity the vocational status of those who’d lived and worked there: Leathermen Street, Coaler Street, Pilot Street.

The driver called out the next stop, but no one wanted to get on or off, so he pressed the long, articulated vehicle, with its accordion patch in the middle, around a left turn, giving Magdalena barely a second to see the Italian restaurant where she’d first met Schneller all those years ago.

He’d been a charmer from the start, but his questions left her with a feeling he already knew the answers she so coyly supplied. At the time she’d wondered if he’d been following her, stalking her as a potential contact. Later, after Schneller had recruited her as an informant, she had asked him straight out and he admitted it, but his smile and the way he made her feel like she was the only woman in the room left her more flattered than angry.

Now, with less than five minutes to her destination, Magdalena wondered what kind of help Schneller would need. She’d prepared for everything, a night, flight, or a fight, and she carried the tools and means to cope with it all. Schneller had arranged for her training in East Germany many years ago, and she’d actually met Markus Wolf, the head of the Stasi, the group which engendered so much fear among its enemies.

Magdalena thought it strange that such wonderfully nice people could be viewed as being so evil; she had always been treated with the utmost respect, always received a medal at the end of each session, an honour she was allowed to leave in the building in East Berlin.

She was now passing the Parliament Building on her right where she used to work, then Rosenbad where the PM and his staff sat. She smiled as she remembered the thousands of documents she’d stolen, copied and given to Schneller.

It had been so easy, so stupidly easy for her to do her job. It was as if no one cared that she was providing a foreign agent with documents revealing the inner government secrets kept from every other citizen of the country. It only seemed to matter that the voters were kept in the dark. It seemed unimportant whether a foreign power knew who was sleeping with whom, and why, and what difference it made to political decisions about timber management, fishing or income taxes on pensioners.

The bus arrived at Tegelbacken, across from the Sheraton Hotel, built on property once occupied by the Women’s Prison, whose inmates had mostly been prostitutes. There were those who joked about today’s luxury upgrade. Just down the street was the Central Train Station, where she and Schneller would soon be boarding their train to Copenhagen. She sat with the rest of the passengers as the driver left the bus until their new driver came on duty at 12.22.

*

Sara began to wonder if there was any collected wisdom of the Buddha about the cold. She knew he’d experienced it, even though most of the monumental statues were located in warm places. The Dali Lama came from Tibet, a very cold place, so maybe he’d written something about it.

She found a special kind of peace in the cold, with no birds, frogs or mosquitoes to distract her from her own thoughts. From within this peace a thought flashed through her mind and she wanted to make sure that she’d remember it later on.

“Blue one. Can you write something down for me?”

“Am I your secretary now? You’re not focusing,” said the controller.

“I am, but I just thought of something very important and I don’t have any way to write it down out here. Besides, it’ll keep you awake.”

“Alright, what is it?”

“Did Lemko have a cell phone with him when we picked him up in Trelleborg? Write it down so I don’t forget it.”

“Keep your mind on what you’re supposed to be doing out there, duckling.” Then a moment later, “Ekman says Lemko didn’t have a phone with him. If he had one earlier, he probably threw it away. We never found one in his house.”

“Thank Ekman for me,” said Sara. “Tell him the ugly duckling is freezing out here.”

She would check all the SMS messages for every suspect on their list when she got back. If she could find just one number linked to Lemko, it would be enough to tie him into a web of communications which could help reveal who he was working with, both here and abroad.

Sara might be able to get to the man who’d given Lemko his contract on Hoffberg. If she didn’t freeze first. She rubbed her cheeks, and had to put the earwig back in after it fell out. In the days of non-tech she’d heard of elaborate hand signals and gestures used to communicate during stakeouts and stings. The new-tech era was great, but there were times when the human side of investigations dropped out of sight. All the talk today was of gigabytes and megapixels.

“Heads up, duckling. You’ve got a bus load of tourists disembarking out on Hantverkar Street. Wake up and fly right.”

City Hall, 12.26.

“City Hall,” said the female voice on the bus intercom as the driver prepared to stop at City Hall. The doors opened in front of the Seraphim Emergency Clinic. Magdalena had already looked for visible signs of police activity in front of the building. She continued up Hantverkar Street to enter the small garden just behind the Government Office responsible for executing political decisions into practical reality, and peeked out on the other side of the building to scan the street running parallel to the bay, North Mälar Strand.

A busload of tourists had begun to disembark, and Magdalena found a couple of Russian women who seemed to accept her company. She walked beside them using her knowledge of Russian, gesturing as she did so, carefully assessing the people to her left and right. The flaps to the plastic tent were closed, but she could hear the sound of a hammer on stone and music playing from a portable radio. She continued with the Russian women, still scanning, but it all looked very safe.

Then she saw Schneller’s black leather overcoat turn quickly to the wall as the three approached the other tourists, and she waited until the tour leader arrived with tickets. The group chattered as they left the garden and the blotchy blue statue of the Dala horse. Then they were alone.

*

Sara saw her as soon as Magdalena came into view from around the corner, and she barely managed to turn into the wall to keep from being recognised. It was her, Sara knew it; there could be no mistake.

Her mind was racing and her gut was turning flip-flops as the puzzle was suddenly completed. When the Russian chatter subsided Sara heard shoes scrape on the sand pebbles lying on the stone steps as Magdalena approached her from behind. She’d have to wait until the last minute, so she pressed her face into the corner.

Then she felt a hand on her back, and a voice called out softly, almost in a whisper, “Schneller? Schneller?” and Sara turned to face her.

“No,” said Sara, and she almost laughed at the surprised look on Magdalena’s face. “No, my name is Sara Markham, remember? And you’re Kristina Hoffberg, also known as Magdalena, and you’re under arrest!”

Kristina Hoffberg, codename Magdalena, backed away, looking wildly from side to side, searching for an escape route.

Sara advanced towards her, grasping for the butt of the weapon under her coat. She struggled to remove the pistol, but the hammer at the end of the Sig Sauer caught on the lining. She tried again, then her hand came up empty. Sara moved closer, holding her right arm out and pointing her finger at Kristina.

“Stop. There’s no way out. Come with me.”

When Kristina reached the bottom of the short stairway, Sara was still at the top of the stairs. From around the corner of the alcove she could see the NSS officers emerge from inside the tent to block Kristina’s path to the street. She was trapped.

Then things started to happen in slow motion. It seemed several seconds went by as Kristina put her hand into her coat pocket. When she withdrew it, Sara could see a black extension to her hand, and how Kristina was hiding it from the NSS officers as she walked towards them.

“Gun!” Sara shouted, as she caught up with Kristina and tackled her from behind.

The gun was still in Kristina’s hand as she went down, landing on her elbows. The sound of the shot from the 38 snub-nose deafened both of them for a second, and Sara didn’t have time to think about what was more appropriate: to try to take out her own gun from its holster, now nearly impossible to reach because of the long overcoat, or to try to disarm Kristina before she could let off another shot.

It wasn’t a rational process. Sara tried to grab for the gun in Kristina’s hand, and they struggled for a minute before Kristina got off another shot, a wild attempt to hit anyone, anything. Sara figured Kristina had no more than four bullets left, and Kristina’s arm was still flailing on the icy gravel, making it impossible for Sara to get hold of it.

She grabbed at Kristina’s hair, catfight style. At least she could get a handful of hair, and she knew it would hurt.

The two NSS officers approached, crouched down, guns drawn, and they spread out so even if Kristina got lucky she’d get only one of them. Kristina kicked Sara in the abdomen. Sara had to break her hold, trying to get some air into her lungs.

From somewhere off in the distance, she could hear one of the NSS officers shout to Kristina for her to stop, then the warning shot in the air before he lowered his gun and put a bullet into Kristina’s left breast. Kristina went down on her knees, then turned back to look at Sara, who suddenly became afraid she was about to be shot. Kristina dropped her pistol and shook her head as life ran out of her body, her eyes glazing over before she hit the gravel. As Sara watched her die she thought of the day Kristina had been hassled by the television reporters, and her tearful embrace when Sara had asked them to leave her alone. She thought of her deception, both to her country and to her husband.

Sara already knew the results of the investigation into the SMS message would indicate Lemko had sent a text to signal that it was OK for Kristina to return, so she would know he’d succeeded in killing her husband. Sara knew their examination of the contents of Kristina’s duffel bag would reveal train tickets and cash for both of them. She knew it, but her thoughts weren’t organised yet, not filed into neat little binders for Cantsten.

“Are you OK?” was the question coming from all sides, and Sara didn’t know yet, except it seemed Kristina Hoffberg was definitely in worse shape than she was. She could hear the siren from an ambulance approach, and she saw the two attendants dressed in green and yellow running towards her, then suddenly disappearing into the plastic tent with the gurney.

“What happened?” Sara asked. “Did she hit someone?”

The uniforms were already cordoning off the garden with blue and white tape, pushing back the tourists who’d got a reality show for the price of the museum ticket. Sara got up from the ground and jogged over to the tent.

Cantsten was inside, her face frozen in horror; tears ran down her cheeks. She’d taken off her cap and her hair was out of place.

“What happened?” Sara asked her.

“It’s him,” said Cantsten. “A man was standing behind the plastic tent the whole time. He was hit by the first bullet.”

Sara watched the two ambulance personnel load the man onto the gurney. They raised it up to the transport position and then ran by Cantsten and Sara. Sara looked down at the man’s face, now grey with shock and blood loss, and she nearly fainted.

It was Hurtree. What the hell was he doing out there? What made him think he could stand there and help her? Sara had other questions in her mind too, but they all disappeared as she raced out of the tent, then she stopped to shout back at Cantsten and the coordinator, “I know this man. I’m going with the ambulance.”

“You know him?” shouted Cantsten after her. “We already checked his ID and he’s got an American driver’s licence but no passport. You know him?”

“Yes, talk to Ekman about his passport,” Sara shouted, and caught up with the ambulance crew as they pushed the gurney onto the tracks in the ambulance to start his journey to the ER. “What about the Acute Clinic across the street?” Sara asked the attendant as she hopped in, showing her badge.

“They’d never be able to help this old geezer. He’s got a bullet in what could be the liver. He’ll bleed out before we can get him into surgery if we don’t hurry. Do you have any medical training?”

“No. He’s a very good friend. You don’t lose him. Understand?”

“Yeah,” said the attendant, ripping open Hurtree’s bloody shirt to expose his abdomen where dark red blood oozed up. “That’s what they all say. To tell you the truth, this one might not make it, but if you’re really a cop then stop all cross-traffic between here and Karolinska Hospital. That’d help. Now hold his hand and shut up while I do my job.”

Sara didn’t have to say anything. Ekman had been informed by the coordinator, and by the time the ambulance was at the first roundabout all cross-traffic had been frozen to a standstill and they speeded to the ER as if it were three in the morning.

*

Sara was sat in the ER reception, waiting for news from the doctors when Ekman showed up.

“You left your watch,” he said sternly, and suddenly Sara was fuming, ready to scratch his eyes out, when she caught the glimmer of concern in his face. “Is he OK, your friend Hurtree?”

“They don’t know yet. He’s been in surgery since we got here and they just keep saying they don’t know anything.”

“I brought his passport,” said Ekman, handing it over to her. “You can give it to him when he wakes up. Sara, what the hell was he doing there? My men in the tent said he managed to sneak behind them.”

“I don’t know what he was doing there. He knew about the sting – we were there yesterday and he helped me plan it, but he had no business being there today. I told him I’d have help. He shouldn’t have been there.”

“You’re right. It’s one of the reasons we never involve civilians in any of our operations. When shit happens to us, it’s in the line of duty. When it happens to them, we get sued.”

“I don’t think Hurtree will sue you,” said Sara. “He might sue Kristina Hoffberg, but she looked pretty far gone last time I saw her.”

“She’s dead,” said Ekman. “Enberg’s shot caught a major artery and she bled to death before the ambulance got there.”

“Is it OK to think that’s OK?” asked Sara.

“No, Sara, it’s not. She should have stood in the prisoner’s dock at court and heard the scorn of her friends and family for all the damage she did. She should’ve been locked up in one of our dingiest dungeons to think about it, and felt the wrath of her fellow prisoners. She got the easy way out, as far as I’m concerned.”

“Well, I still think she got what she deserved. And she can’t do anyone else any harm from now on. At least we’ve got Lemko to stuff into the slammer, and that’s what he wants.”

“He may get what he wants, but he won’t get it here for a long time. He was extradited this morning. Seems he did something terrible in Russia during the Cold War, so they got him first. Two guys showed up this morning with all the necessary paperwork. Cantsten was furious, but a guy from the Justice Department, another from the Foreign Office and the PM’s own political secretary were there. All the papers had already been signed from very high up, so it’s out of our hands.”

Sara noticed Ekman had brought Kristina Hoffberg’s duffel bag with him. There was a smudge of her blood on it, nearly covered by a yellow evidence tag. “Did you find anything interesting in her bag?” she asked.

“Nothing we didn’t expect. She had tickets for the train down to Copenhagen that left an hour ago, some clothes for herself and for a man, probably Schneller. She had a lot of cash in euros and there was a plastic bag full of documents I haven’t had a chance to read yet.”

“Don’t you guys have to let Forensics take everything with them like we do?” Sara asked.

“Sometimes things can get lost in the evidence bags. It’s easier for me to take it with me. They’ll get it back tomorrow,” said Ekman, as he fidgeted with the bag. “And tomorrow I expect you to be at our meeting when we close this case.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll be there.”

“Sara,” he said as he turned to leave, “very good work today. You couldn’t have done any better.”

“Two people got shot. And one of them got killed. I don’t know about my friend yet, but I still have to get it straight in my head if I did anything that got him or her shot.”

“You know you have to talk to Internal Affairs when you leave here?”

“Yes. I know.”

“When I get in tomorrow I want to see your name on an application to work at the NSS. You’ll find the details of the job on your desk.” And then he was gone, the bloody duffel bag thrown over his shoulder.

An hour later a nurse told Sara Hurtree was out of surgery and off the critical list. He’d been lucky: Kristina Hoffberg’s bullet had been slowed by travelling through two sheets of thick plastic before catching him in the side, and he’d had a travel guide book about City Hall in his coat pocket that took almost all of the remaining impact, so the wound to his abdomen was a slight bruise to the liver; painful and potentially serious if unattended, but the dark-haired surgeon was very cheerful and certain Hurtree would be up and about in two or three days. Sara left a message to say that she’d visit Hurtree tomorrow during visiting hours, and went to talk to Internal Affairs.

*

The investigators at IA were friendly at first, becoming more determined as they continued. At the end their questions made Sara feel as if she’d been responsible for every trauma in the country during the past week.

She answered them as well as she could, feeling boxed into tighter and tighter loops of logic, leaving her only one option when the final questions landed and her answer sounded childish and inadequate. Why hadn’t she drawn her weapon and demanded that Kristina Hoffberg surrender? When Sara tried to explain, she didn’t like the way the answers sounded. She couldn’t get at her holster inside the leather coat so she’d simply pointed her finger at Kristina Hoffberg, shouting at her that she was from the police and she should stop.

And why did Sara tackle her from behind when she saw she’d drawn a gun, creating the conditions for the stray shot which hit Hurtree? Sara’s answer turned into a question; how could she risk her getting away? Her suspect was armed and on the run. The investigators sat there, faces made of wood waiting for her to continue, but there wasn’t anything more to say and she stared back at them.

They asked how many shots Enberg had fired at Kristina Hoffberg, and Sara told them about the warning shout and the two shots she’d heard. Finally, after what seemed like a thousand heartbeats they said she could go, and Sara left, her armpits leaking.

Enberg, the officer who had nailed Kristina Hoffberg, was waiting outside and he looked like he was going to pee his pants at any moment. Sara smiled at him, trying to cheer him up, but she could see the pain he was going through. The knowledge that another human being’s life had been extinguished because he’d made a snap decision and pulled the trigger weighed on his shoulders. She hoped she’d never have to do what he had done.

*

Cantsten was in the coffee room when Sara got to work the next day, and she followed Sara into her office.

“I’m still in a state of shock,” said Cantsten. “Yesterday was a little more than I’d expected. How’s the man who got shot?”

“He got lucky,” Sara said. “The doctor said he’ll be ready for discharge in a few days. I heard you were a little pissed off about Lemko getting extradited before trial.”

“Pissed off?” said Cantsten. “Try infuriated. I hate it when politicians start dabbling in the judicial process. Imagine what kind of stink there’d be if some company director had done the same thing. And what’s even worse, our journalist friends don’t even find it strange anymore.”

“Neither do I. I’ve reached the point where I can accept politicians living by different rules than the rest of us. I used to get all upset by it, now I just duck and hope the shit hits someone else’s fan.”

“You’re a cynic, Sara,” said Cantsten.

“No, just a realist. I have a job to do and I can get it done better if I don’t have to be pissed off all the time.”

*

After Cantsten left, Sara worked on her reports, the fuel powering the administration. She walked into Sven’s room, but he was gone on another budget mission to save someone’s job.

She left her reports on top of his inbox and snuck over to the hospital to see how Hurtree was doing. When she got there he was just being served lunch.

“Hi, Sara,” said Hurtree. “What is this crap? You serve your criminals better food. This wouldn’t even make it in the army.”

“Don’t complain, Hurtree,” Sara bantered. “Your doctor probably doesn’t want to overstress your liver.”

“Then she should have given me a prescription for Guinness – I could eat and drink at the same time. What I’ve drunk so far made my liver bulletproof, so it can’t be all that bad.”

“Yeah, you’re pretty good at stopping bullets, Hurtree. Did you get practice in the war?”

“No, believe it or not. Not everyone in a war gets shot. I had to wait until nearly the end of my days to get a Purple Heart.”

“What’s a Purple Heart?” asked Sara.

“Never mind, youngster” he said. “I never got one. How did your sting work out, aside from nearly getting me killed?”

“I’m so sorry, John. I was trying to stop her from getting away and I tackled her. She had a gun drawn and it went off when she hit the ground. You stopped the bullet.”

“At least I was good for something. So you got her?”

“She drew her weapon on one of my colleagues. She shouldn’t have done that. His shot ended her life.”

“So did you ever find out who she was, this Magdalena woman?”

“Yeah, we did. She was the murder victim’s wife.”

“As usual, I’d say.”

“Yeah, makes you wonder if it’s part of the marriage vows. Until your murder do us part.”

“I don’t know. I never got married, and to tell you the truth, it could be what’s kept me alive all these years.”

“Yeah, I think you’re right, Hurtree. I doubt any woman in her right mind could put up with you.”

“And Schneller?” he asked. “I guess he’ll be doing time.”

“Maybe, but not here to start with. He was extradited with the help of our Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs yesterday.”

“He doesn’t know what he missed out on,” said Hurtree, and returned to his bowl of vegetable soup and fruit juice. “I’ll take your prisoner food any day. By the way,” he said between spoonfuls, “was it you who fixed my passport?”

“I gave it to the nurse for safekeeping. Ekman gave it to me while you were in surgery.”

“So I guess I can go home at the end of next week,” said Hurtree, then he looked at Sara with questions in his wrinkled face. “Unless maybe I move here. What would you think of that, youngster?” he asked.

For half a minute Sara didn’t know what to say, so she just sat there with her mouth open, looking into his bright blue eyes which had somehow picked up a new sparkle. “I-I guess it’s up to you,” she said. “But yeah, it’d be nice to get more than a Christmas card from you.”

“OK, then it’s settled,” he said. “I’ve already talked to your Department of Immigration about settling here and as long as I give them more than half of my pension there won’t be any problem. They asked me if I thought I was a political refugee, which has always been the truth, so there won’t be much problem there either.”

“Welcome to the North Pole,” said Sara, halfway out the door on her way back to work. “If you need a sponsor you can put me down.”

“Thanks,” said Hurtree. “Maybe I should put Ekman’s name there too.”

Chapter 27

Lars Ekman heard the new snow crunch under his shoes as he walked towards the rose-coloured building in front of him. It hadn’t been easy to get a quick appointment with the busy Prime Minister, but for someone from the National Security Service with urgent business, an exception could be made. He reached the revolving door and stopped to let a large, balding, middle-aged man exit. Ekman recognised him at once, turned and watched as the man got into the taxi waiting for him. Once inside Ekman registered with the guards, and put on his visitor’s pass while he waited to be ushered through the sets of security gates.

A secretary opened the door to the Prime Minister’s office. The PM remained sitting behind his desk as Ekman walked through the door. Even though the PM continued reading the papers on his desk, Ekman saw he was being observed as he approached. The PM resembled a defensive bulldog with his head down.

When he was only ten feet away, the PM raised his head and spoke in a harsh, demanding voice, “Ekman, why are you here and not your superior? I normally don’t have to deal with subordinate officers.”

“I’m sorry, Prime Minister,” said Ekman, standing almost at attention. “Our Director has been sitting the entire day at a conference with the Minister of Finance regarding the budget, and because of the urgency of the matter I was told to come here to brief you on the situation.”

“Well, get on with it. I have to prepare for a trip to Moscow tomorrow.”

“Well, first, Prime Minister, I bumped into a well-known face as I came into the building, a man we chased for many years when he was an agent for the East German Stasi.”

“Do you know his name?”

“Yes, his name is Werner Hartmann,” said Ekman.

“He’s the director of a very large Russian energy company today. East Germany doesn’t exist anymore, so I guess none of it matters now. Was that why you came?”

“No, Prime Minister. Hoffberg’s murder involved his wife – she turned out to be a long-time Stasi agent. She tried to escape. We found some incriminating documents among her papers involving your cabinet, Prime Minister.”

“May I see them?”

“Let me explain first,” said Ekman.

“I want to see these documents. Now.”

Ekman handed over the file containing the documents, and the Prime Minister flipped through them, speed-reading most of them as he did so. Finally he looked up at Ekman, still standing at attention, and said, “There’s a private letter to the Prime Minister of East Germany from my, uh, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. I’m not sure why it’s so incriminating.”

“It’s a very long letter, Prime Minister,” said Ekman, “and it’s not so very private. As you can see he used Foreign Office stationery and this letter was stolen from the archive at Parliament. Perhaps you should read it in detail. I think you’ll find it’s quite inappropriate that the man who is now your Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs was peddling secrets he obtained during top-secret meetings with the American Ambassador.”

“Well, there has been some reaction from the Americans about my appointment, but I thought it was just a defensive reaction. Niklas has been critical of their engagement in several wars – I’m sure you’re aware of his stance.”

“It may be possible the Americans know who peddled their secrets. It could be there are other sources than the Rosenholz list,” said Ekman.

“Niklas was the one I assigned to make sure the Rosenholz list didn’t contain any, uh, surprises. He told me we were safe.”

“Perhaps he meant that he was safe, Prime Minister.”

“Are you finished?” The PM held the documents in his right hand, and waved them at Ekman as he spoke.

“Yes, Prime Minister. The documents?”

“You’ve made your point. I’ll need these when I speak to Niklas,” said the PM, and he put the documents on his desk.

“They’re the originals, Prime Minister. We’ll need them for our files.”

“Then I’ll make you some copies,” said the PM, turning towards the corner behind his desk. He straightened the documents by loosely holding their sides, bouncing them off his desk twice, then placed them into the feeder of the machine in the corner.

After a few seconds the machine whirred to a stop and the PM turned around to face Ekman with a sheepish grin. “Oh, I’m so sorry, I’m not very good with technology. I seemed to have put the documents into my shredder instead of the copy machine.”

“Yes, Prime Minister,” said Ekman, swallowing hard, “I understand. I’m sure you’ll understand we’ll be looking a little more closely at your Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs from now on, of course.”

“Yes, of course,” said the PM as he sat down again.

Ekman left the PM’s room and Rosenbad; then took a bus back to the NSS to file his report. When he was finished he gathered the copies he’d made earlier that day of the documents the PM had shredded, placing them into a binder; his own personal book of the sins of others, to be used someday when he needed it.

*

Sara was on her way out, going through security when she saw Ekman in the corridor. He seemed preoccupied, deeply troubled, and looked at least five years older than he had earlier in the day.

“Good evening, sir,” she said.

“Good evening,” he said, barely looking up. Then, “Have you spoken to Hurtree about his passport yet?”

“Yes, I spoke to him during lunch. He seems very fit for such an old man. He mentioned you, said he might put you down as a sponsor if he were to move here.”

“He must be joking.”

“Probably. I don’t think he’s had a chance to review our tax tables yet. He’ll change his mind if he does. See you tomorrow. I’m going to fill in an application before I leave.”

When Sara got home she took a hot bath, opened a box of crackers and spread a thick layer of ripe, creamy camembert cheese on half a dozen of them, took a slurp of green tea and started her computer. She checked her email to find the usual spam about love potions and organ enhancements for both genders. She Googled the words Purple Heart on the internet and the first entry gave her the background Hurtree hadn’t given her.

The tea began to do its warm work on her and Sara rummaged through some drawers to find a sheet of paper that came close to violet, and she began to make a Purple Heart medal for Hurtree, the medal used to honour soldiers who’d been wounded in action since the days of the American Revolution. She wasn’t too happy with her image of General George Washington, but then, with a smile, she glued a white profile of the Buddha on top of the purple, heart-shaped paper medal.

The television news had begun just as she was finished. The PM had reshuffled his government again, creating a game of musical chairs between five ministers in his cabinet. The interview with the PM was short, and he seemed quite relaxed, clearly pleased with his new assignments, including the appointment of his new Ambassador to the European Parliament, his previous Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs for Foreign Aid.

“Niklas Shoreman will provide an important reinforcement of our efforts to support the struggle for a more just and equal world, by reducing poverty in the third world,” said the PM, and Sara switched off the TV.

Acknowledgements

I am fortunate to know many excellent writers, who have been generous and supportive while I wrote, and rewrote this book. I would like to send a warm thank you to Kathy Boyd Fellure and Gini Grossenbacher,  who had the patience and kindness to help me develop my writing. In addition,  Robert Pacholik, Sarah Armstrong-Garner, Pam Mundal and Gwen Clayton made important contributions. In addition, I had contact with several editors, and would like to mention Helena Zhemchugova for her considerable editing skills, and especially the team working under Amy Durant, of Endeavour Press.

Finally, but not least, my wife Ann provided me endless support during the years I worked on this book.

If you enjoyed The Magdalena File check out Endeavour Press’s other books here: Endeavour Press - the UK’s leading independent publisher of digital books.

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