Authors: Henning Mankell
His train of thought was interrupted by his cell phone ringing. It was Sten Nordlander. His voice was rough and deep.
“I know who you are,” he said. “Both Håkan and Louise have talked about you. Where can I pick you up?”
Wallander was waiting on the sidewalk when Sten Nordlander pulled up. His car was a Dodge from the mid-fifties, covered in shiny chrome and with whitewall tires. No doubt Nordlander had been a sort of Teddy Boy in his youth. Even now he was wearing a leather jacket, American-style boots, jeans, and a thin undershirt despite the cold weather. Wallander couldn’t help wondering how on earth von Enke and Nordlander had become such good friends. At first glance he found it impossible to think of two people who seemed more different. But judging by outward appearances was always dangerous. That reminded him of one of Rydberg’s favorite sayings:
Outward appearances are something you should nearly always ignore
.
“Jump in,” said Sten Nordlander.
Wallander didn’t ask where they were going; he merely sank back into the red leather seat that was no doubt authentic. He asked a few polite questions about the car, and received similarly polite answers. Then they sat in silence. Two large dice in woolly material were swinging back and forth in the rear window. Wallander had seen lots of similar cars in his early youth. Behind the wheel were always middle-aged men wearing suits that glistened just as much as the chrome fittings on the cars. They came to buy up his father’s paintings by the dozen, and paid in notes peeled off thick bundles. He used to call them “the Silk Knights.” He discovered later they had humiliated his father by paying far too little for his paintings.
The memory made him feel sad. But it was in the past, impossible to resurrect.
There were no seat belts in the car. Nordlander saw that Wallander was looking for one.
“This is a classic car,” he said. “It’s excused from the obligatory seat belts.”
They eventually came to somewhere or other on Värmdö—Wallander had lost his sense of distance and direction long ago. Nordlander pulled up outside a brown-painted building containing a café.
“The woman who owns the café used to be married to one of Håkan’s and my mutual friends,” said Nordlander. “She’s a widow now. Her name’s Matilda. Her husband, Claes Hornvig, was first officer on a Snake that both Håkan and I worked on.”
Wallander nodded. He recalled that Håkan von Enke had referred to that class of submarine.
“We try to give her business whenever we can. She needs the money. And besides, she serves pretty good coffee.”
The first thing Wallander noticed when he entered the café was a periscope standing in the middle of the floor. Nordlander explained which decommissioned submarine it had come from, and it dawned on Wallander that he was in a private museum for submarines.
“It’s become a habit,” explained Nordlander. “Anyone who ever served on a Swedish submarine makes at least one pilgrimage to Matilda’s café. And they always bring something with them—it’s unthinkable not to. Some stolen china, perhaps, or a blanket, or even items from the controls. Bonanza time of course was when submarines were being decommissioned and sent to the scrap yard. Lots of ex-servicemen turned up to collect souvenirs, and there was always somebody determined to find something to grace Matilda’s collection. The money didn’t matter; it was a question of salvaging something from the dead submarine.”
A woman in her twenties emerged from the swinging doors leading into the kitchen.
“Matilda and Claes’s granddaughter Marie,” said Nordlander. “Matilda still puts in an appearance now and again, but she’s over ninety now. She claims that her mother lived to be a hundred and one and her grandmother a hundred and three.”
“That’s right,” said the girl. “My mom’s fifty. She says she’s only lived half her life.”
They were served a tray of coffee and pastries. Nordlander also helped himself to a slice of cheesecake. There were a few other customers at other tables, most of them elderly.
“Former submarine crew?” Wallander wondered as they made their way to the room farthest away from the street, which was empty.
“Not necessarily,” said Nordlander. “But I do recognize some of them.”
This room in the heart of the café had old uniforms and signal flags hanging from the walls. Wallander had the feeling that he was in a props store for military films. They sat down at a table in the corner. On the wall beside them was a framed black-and-white photograph. Sten Nordlander pointed it out.
“There you have one of our Sea Snakes. Number two in the second row is me. Number four is Håkan. Claes Hornvig wasn’t with us on that occasion.”
Wallander leaned forward in order to get a better view. It wasn’t easy to distinguish the various faces. Nordlander informed him that the picture had been taken in Karlskrona, just before they had set off on a long trip.
“I suppose it wasn’t exactly our ideal voyage,” he said. “We were due to go from Karlskrona up to the Kvarken straits, then on to Kalix and back home again. It was November, freezing cold. If I remember correctly there was a storm blowing the whole time. The ship was tossing and turning something awful—the Baltic Sea is so shallow, we could never get down deep enough. The Baltic Sea is nothing more than a pool.”
Nordlander attacked the pastries with eager intent. It didn’t seem to matter what they tasted like. But suddenly he laid down his fork.
“What happened?” he said.
“I know no more than you or Louise.”
Nordlander pushed his coffee cup violently to one side. Wallander could see that he was just as tired as Louise. Someone else who can’t get to sleep, he thought.
“You know him,” Wallander said, “better than most. Louise said you and Håkan were very close. If that’s the case, then your view of events is more important than most others.”
“You sound just like the police officer I spoke to in Bergsgatan.”
“But I
am
a police officer!”
Sten Nordlander nodded. He was very tense. You could tell how worried he was from his fixed expression and his tight lips.
“How come you weren’t at his seventy-fifth birthday party?” Wallander asked.
“I have a sister who lives in Bergen, in Norway. Her husband died unexpectedly. She needed my help. Besides, I’m not exactly a fan of big dos like that. Håkan and I had our own celebration. A week earlier.”
“Where?”
“Here. With coffee and cookies.”
Nordlander pointed to a naval cap hanging on the wall.
“That’s Håkan’s. He made a present of it when we had our little celebration.”
“What did you talk about?”
“What we always talk about. What happened in October 1982. I was serving on the destroyer
Halland
. It was about to be decommissioned. It’s now a museum piece in Gothenburg.”
“So you weren’t only a chief engineer on submarines?”
“I started out on a torpedo boat, then it was a corvette, then a destroyer, then a submarine, and in the end back to a destroyer. We were deployed to the west coast when the submarines started appearing in the Baltic Sea. At about noon on October 2, Commander Nyman announced that we should head for the Stockholm archipelago at full speed because we were needed as backup.”
“Were you in contact with Håkan during those hectic days?”
“He called me.”
“At home or on board?”
“On the destroyer. I was never at home then. All leave was canceled. We were on red alert, you could say. Bear in mind that this was the blissful time before cell phones had become common currency. The sailors manning the destroyer’s telephone exchange would come down and inform us that we had a call. Håkan usually called at night. He wanted me to receive his call in my cabin.”
“Why?”
“I suppose he didn’t want anybody else to hear what we were talking about.”
There was something surly and reluctant in the way Sten Nordlander answered questions. He sat there mashing the remains of the pastry with his fork.
“We spoke to each other practically every night between the first and the fifteenth of October. I don’t think he was supposed to talk to me the way he did, but we trusted each other. His responsibility weighed heavily on his shoulders. A depth charge can go off course and sink a submarine instead of forcing it up to the surface.”
By now Nordlander had turned the remains of his pastry into an unappetizing mess. He put down his fork and dropped a paper napkin over his plate.
“He called me three times that last night. Very late—or rather, early: it was dawn when he called the last time.”
“And you were still on board the destroyer?”
“We were less than a nautical mile southeast of Hårsfjärden. It was windy, but not too bad. We were on full alert. The officers were informed about what was happening, of course, but the rest of the crew knew only that we were ready for action, not why.”
“Were you really going to be ordered to start hunting down the submarine?”
“We couldn’t know what the Russians would do if we forced one of their submarines to surface. Perhaps they might try to rescue it? There were
Russian vessels north of Gotland, and they were moving slowly in our direction. One of our radio officers said he’d never experienced so much Russian radio traffic before, not even during their major maneuvers along the Baltic coast. They were agitated, that was obvious.”
He paused when Marie came in and asked if they wanted any more coffee. Both said no.
“Let’s consider the most important thing,” said Wallander. “How did you react to the order to let the trapped submarine go?”
“I couldn’t believe my ears.”
“How did you hear about it?”
“Nyman suddenly received an order to back off, proceed to Landsort, and wait there. No explanation was given, and Nyman wasn’t the type to ask unnecessary questions. I was in the engine room when I was told there was a phone call for me. I ran up to my cabin. It was Håkan. He asked if I was alone.”
“Did he usually do that?”
“Not usually, no. I said I was. He insisted it was important that I speak the truth. I remember feeling angry about that. Then I realized he had left the operations room and was calling from a phone booth.”
“How could you know that? Did he say so?”
“I heard him inserting coins. There was a phone booth in the officer’s mess. Since he couldn’t be away from the command center for more than a couple of minutes, only as long as it would take to go to the bathroom, he must have run there.”
“Did he say so?”
Nordlander looked searchingly at him.
“Is it you or me who’s the policeman here? I could hear that he was out of breath!”
Wallander didn’t allow himself to be provoked. He merely nodded, indicating that Nordlander should continue.
“He was agitated, both furious and scared, I think you could say. He insisted that it was treason, and that he was going to disobey orders and bomb that damned submarine up to the surface no matter what they said. Then his money ran out. It was as if somebody had cut through a tape.”
Wallander stared at him, waiting for a continuation that never came.
“That’s a strong word to use. Treason?”
“But that’s exactly what it was! They released a submarine that had invaded our territorial waters.”
“Who was responsible?”
“Somebody in the high command, possibly more than one person, who
got extremely cold feet. They didn’t want to force a Russian submarine up to the surface.”
A man carrying a cup of coffee came into the room, but Nordlander glared so aggressively at him that he turned immediately and went to look for a table in another room.
“I don’t know who was responsible. It might be easier to answer the question Why? but even so it would only be speculation. What you don’t know, you don’t know.”
“Sometimes it’s necessary to think aloud. Even for police officers.”
“Let’s suppose there was something on board that submarine that the Swedish authorities couldn’t be allowed to get their hands on.”
“What might that be?”
Sten Nordlander lowered his voice—not much, but sufficiently for Wallander to notice.
“Maybe you could extend that assumption and suggest that it wasn’t ‘something’ but ‘someone.’ How would it have looked if it turned out there was a Swedish officer on board? For example.”
“What makes you think that?”
“It wasn’t my idea. It was one of Håkan’s theories. He had lots of them.”
Wallander thought for a moment before continuing. He realized that he should have noted down everything Nordlander said.
“What happened after that?”
“After what?”
Nordlander was starting to get cross. But whether it was because of all the questions or due to worry in connection with his friend’s disappearance, Wallander couldn’t decide.
“Håkan told me that he started to ask questions,” Wallander said.
“He tried to find out what had happened. But nearly everything was top secret, of course. Some documents were even classified as ultra-secret so that they would remain under lock and key for seventy years. That’s the longest time anything can be kept secret in Sweden. The normal limit is forty years. But in this case some of the papers were embargoed for seventy years. In all probability not even that nice little Marie who served us coffee and pastries will live long enough to be able to read them.”
“But then again, she belongs to a family with good genes,” said Wallander.
Sten Nordlander didn’t react.
“Håkan could be difficult if he’d set his mind on something,” Nordlander continued. “He felt just as violated as the Swedish territorial waters had been. Someone had failed in their duty, and failed in spades. A lot of journalists
started digging into the submarines incident, but that wasn’t good enough for Håkan. He really wanted to know the truth. He staked his career on it.”
“Who did he speak to?”
Nordlander’s reply came quickly, like a crack of the whip in order to buck up an invisible horse.
“Everybody. He asked everybody you can think of. Perhaps not the king, but you never know. He asked for an interview with the prime minister, that’s definite. He called Thage G. Peterson, that fine old Social Democrat in the cabinet office, and asked for a meeting with Palme. Peterson said the PM’s diary was full, but Håkan wouldn’t be put off. ‘Get out the reserve diary then,’ he insisted. ‘The one in which urgent meetings can always be fitted in.’ And he actually did get an interview. A few days before Christmas 1983.”