Authors: Henning Mankell
“Håkan wasn’t the only one who was upset,” he said. “A lot of us wondered what on earth was going on. It was several years after the Wennerström affair, but there were a lot of rumors going around.”
“About what?”
Nordlander cocked his head, challenging Wallander to say what he should already know.
“Spies?”
“It simply wasn’t plausible for the submarines that were definitely present under the surface of Hårsfjärden always to be one step ahead of us. They acted like they knew what tactics we were adopting, and where our mines were laid. It was as if they could hear all the discussions our superiors were having. There were rumors about a spy even better placed than Wennerström. Don’t forget that this was the time when a spy in Norway, Arne Treholt, was moving in Norwegian government circles, and Willy Brandt’s secretary was spying for East Germany. The suspicions didn’t lead anywhere. Nobody was exposed. But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t somebody high up in the Swedish military who was spying.”
Wallander thought about the letters
X, Y
, and
Z
in von Enke’s margin notes.
“There must have been individuals you suspected?”
“There were naval officers who thought a lot of facts suggested that Palme himself was a spy. I always thought that was nonsense. But the truth is, nobody was above suspicion. And we were being attacked in different ways.”
“Attacked?”
“Cutbacks. All the available money was being spent on guided missiles and on the air force. The navy was being squeezed more and more. Quite a few journalists at the time spoke dismissively about our ‘budget submarines.’ They figured the alleged invaders had been invented as part of a plan for the navy to get more and better resources.”
“Were you ever doubtful?”
“What about?”
“About the existence of the submarines.”
“Never. Of course the Russian submarines existed.”
Wallander produced the black file from its plastic bag. He felt sure Sten Nordlander had never seen it before. His surprised expression didn’t seem put on. He dried his hands and placed the open file on his knee. There was hardly any wind, barely a ripple on the surface of the sea.
Nordlander leafed slowly through the pages. He occasionally looked up to check where the boat was drifting, then looked back down at the file.
When he came to the end, he closed it, handed it back to Wallander, and shook his head.
“I’m astonished,” he said. “But then, I knew Håkan was looking into these matters. I just didn’t realize he was doing it in so much detail. What would you call it? A diary? A private memoir?”
“I think it can be read in two ways,” said Wallander. “Partly just as it stands. But also as an incomplete investigation into what happened.”
“Incomplete?”
He’s right, Wallander thought. Why did I say that? The book is presumably just the opposite. Something completed and closed.
“You’re probably right,” Wallander said. “He must have finished it. But what did he think he would achieve?”
“It was a long time before I realized how much time he was spending in archives, reading reports, investigation accounts, books. And he spoke to everybody you could think of. Sometimes people would call me and ask what Håkan was up to. I just told them I thought he wanted to know the truth about what had happened.”
“And what he was doing wasn’t popular, I gather? That’s what he told me.”
“I think that in the end he was seen as unreliable. That was tragic. Nobody in the navy was more honest and conscientious than Håkan. He must have been deeply hurt, even if he never said anything.”
Nordlander lifted the hatch and took a look at the engine.
“A real beauty, like a beating heart,” he said as he closed the hatch again. “I once worked as chief engineer on one of our two Halland class destroyers, the
Småland
. Just being in her engine room was one of the greatest experiences of my life. There were two de Laval turbines that produced almost sixty thousand horsepower. She was a thirty-five-hundred-ton vessel, but we could shift her through the water at thirty-five knots max. That was something special. It was good to be alive.”
“I have a question,” Wallander said. “It’s extremely important. Is there anything in the stuff you’ve just looked through that shouldn’t be there?”
“Something secret, you mean?” said Nordlander, frowning. “Not that I could see.”
“Did anything surprise you?”
“I didn’t read in detail. I could barely decipher the margin comments. But nothing gave me pause.”
“Then can you explain to me why he hid the stuff away?”
Nordlander hesitated before answering. He contemplated a sailboat passing some distance away.
“I don’t understand what could have been secret about it,” he said eventually. “Who was he hiding it from?”
Wallander pricked up his ears. Something the man sitting beside him had said was important. But he couldn’t pin it down. He memorized both sentences.
Nordlander started the engine again and revved up to ten knots, heading for Mysingen and Hårsfjärden. Wallander stood beside him. Over the next few hours Sten Nordlander took him on a guided tour of Muskö and Hårsfjärden. He pointed out where the depth charges had been sunk, and where the submarines might have been able to escape through minefields that had not been activated. The whole time, Wallander was following their route on a sea chart, noting all the deep and hidden depressions. He understood that only a very well-trained crew could negotiate Hårsfjärden under the surface.
When Nordlander decided they had seen enough, he changed course and headed for a cluster of islets and skerries in the narrows between Ornö and Utö. Beyond was the open sea. He skillfully guided the boat into an inlet in one of the skerries, and moored at the bottom of a cliff.
“Not many people know about this inlet,” he said as he shut down the engine. “So I always have it to myself. Enjoy!”
Wallander jumped ashore and secured the mooring rope, then collected the basket and placed it on a convenient rock. It smelled like the sea and the vegetation that filled the crevices. He felt like a child again, on a journey of exploration on an unknown island.
“What’s the island called?” he asked.
“It’s not much more than a rocky outcrop. It doesn’t have a name.”
Without further ado Nordlander undressed and jumped into the water. Wallander watched his head bobbing up before disappearing again under the surface. He’s like a submarine, Wallander thought. Practicing diving and surfacing. He’s not worried about how cold the water is.
Nordlander clambered back up onto the rocks and took a large red towel from the picnic basket.
“You should give it a try,” he said. “It’s cold, but it does you good.”
“Some other time perhaps. What’s the water temperature?”
“There’s a thermometer behind the compass. You can take a measurement while I get dried off and serve up the food.”
Wallander found the thermometer attached to a little rubber ball. He let the ball float in the water, then pulled it out and took the reading.
“Fifty-two degrees,” he said when he came back to where Nordlander was laying out the food. “Too cold for me. Do you go swimming in the winter as well?”
“No. But I’ve thought about it. We can eat in ten minutes. Go for a walk around the little island. You might find a message in a bottle from a capsized Russian submarine.”
Wallander wondered if there was something behind Nordlander’s words, but he didn’t think so. Sten Nordlander wasn’t a man who dealt in obscure subtexts.
He sat down on a large flat rock with an unobstructed view of the horizon, picked up a few stones, and threw them into the water. When had he last played ducks and drakes? He recalled a visit to Stenshuvud with Linda when she was a teenager and reluctant to take trips with him. They had played ducks and drakes then, and she was much better at it than he was. And now she’s as good as married, he thought. She found the right man. If she hadn’t, I wouldn’t be standing here on this rocky outcrop, staring out to sea and wondering about his vanished parents.
One day he would teach Klara to skim flat stones over the water and watch them jump along like frogs before sinking.
He was just about to stand up and go—Sten Nordlander had shouted for him—but he remained seated with the last stone in his hand. Small, gray, a fragment of Swedish rock. A thought struck him, vague at first, but becoming clearer all the time.
He remained seated for so long that Nordlander had to shout for him again. Then he stood up and walked over to the picnic, but with the thought firmly lodged in his mind.
After he had been dropped off back at Grevgatan that evening by Sten Nordlander and watched him drive away, he hurried up the stairs to the apartment.
His suspicion was confirmed. The little gray stone that had been lying on Håkan von Enke’s desk was missing.
The sea trip had tired Wallander out. It had also stimulated many thoughts. Not just about why the stone was missing. Something inside him had clicked when Sten Nordlander said: “Who was he hiding it from?” Håkan von Enke could have had only one reason for hiding his book.
There was still something going on
. He wasn’t simply rooting around in the past; he wasn’t trying to
bring a sleeping or mummified truth to life. What had happened in the 1980s was linked to what was happening today.
It must have something to do with people. People who were still alive. At one point in the book von Enke had written a list of names that had meant nothing to Wallander—with one exception, that of a man who often appeared in the media during the hunt for the submarines, a man highly placed in the Swedish navy: Sven-Erik Håkansson. Beside that name von Enke had written a cross, an exclamation point, and a question mark. What could that mean? The notes were not haphazard; everything was calculated, even if much of it was in a secret language that Wallander had only partially been able to interpret.
He took out the file again and examined the names once more, wondering if they were people involved somehow or other in the battle against the intruders, or if they were suspects. And if so, suspected of what?
He took a deep breath.
Håkan von Enke had been on the trail of a Russian spy
. Somebody who had given the Russian submarines sufficient information for them to fool their pursuers, even to dictate what weaponry they would need. Somebody who was still out there, who still hadn’t been exposed. That was the person from whom von Enke had concealed his notes, the person he was afraid of.
The man outside the fence in Djursholm, Wallander thought. Was that someone who didn’t like the idea of Håkan von Enke hunting down a spy?
Wallander adjusted the floor lamp next to the sofa and worked his way through the thick file yet again. He paused every time he came to notes that could possibly indicate traces of a spy. Perhaps that was also the answer to another question, the feeling that somebody had removed documents from the archive in von Enke’s study. The person responsible for removing the papers was probably Håkan von Enke himself. It was all like some sort of Russian nesting doll. He had not only hidden his notes, but he had also hidden from outsiders what they actually meant. He had laid a smoke screen. Or perhaps rather a minefield that could be activated whenever he wanted, if he noticed that someone was getting close to him, someone who had no business being there.
Wallander eventually turned off the light and went to bed. But he couldn’t get to sleep. On a sudden impulse, he got up, dressed, and went out. Earlier in his life when he was feeling especially lonely he had tried to improve the situation by going for long nocturnal walks. There wasn’t a single street in Ystad that he hadn’t become familiar with. Now he walked along Strandvägen and then turned left toward the bridge to Djurgården. It was a warm summer night and there were still people out and about,
many of them drunk and boisterous. Wallander felt like a furtive stranger as he wandered through the shadows. He continued past the amusement park at Gröna Lund, and didn’t turn back until he came to the Thielska art gallery. He wasn’t thinking about anything in particular, just strolling around in the night instead of sleeping. When he arrived back at the apartment he fell asleep right away; his excursion had achieved its desired effect.
The following day he drove home. He was back in Skåne by midafternoon and stopped to stock up on provisions before tackling the final stretch and picking up Jussi, who was overjoyed to see him and left muddy paw prints on his clothes. After eating and sleeping for an hour or two, he sat down at the kitchen table with the file in front of him. He had taken out his strongest magnifying glass. His father had given it to him many years ago, when he had displayed a sudden interest in tiny insects crawling around in the grass. It was one of the few presents he had ever received, apart from the dog, Saga, and he treasured it. Now he used it to examine the photographs between the black covers, leaving the texts and margin notes in peace for a change.
One of the photos seemed to stick out like a sore thumb. It hadn’t occurred to him before, but there was something too
civilian
about the picture. He was quite sure that nothing in the book was there by accident. Håkan von Enke was a careful and very dedicated hunter.
The photo, which was in black and white, had been taken at some sort of harbor. In the background was a building with no windows, presumably a warehouse. With the aid of the magnifying glass, Wallander was able to make out two trucks and some stacks of fish crates in a blurred area at the edge of the picture. The photographer had aimed the camera at two men standing by a fishing boat, an old-fashioned trawler. One of the men was old, the other very young, no more than a boy. Wallander guessed that the picture had been taken sometime in the sixties. The fashion was still wool sweaters and leather jackets, sou’westers and oilskins. The boat was white, and scraped up. Behind and between the older man’s legs Wallander could just make out the registration plate. The last letter was
G
. The first letter was almost completely hidden, but the middle one could be an
R
or a
T
. The numbers were easier to read:
123
. Wallander sat down at his computer and Googled various search words in an attempt to find out where the trawler was registered. He soon established that there was only one possibility: the combination of letters had to be
NRG
. The trawler was based on the east coast, in the neighborhood of Norrköping. After a little more searching Wallander found the home pages of the National Administration
of Shipping and Navigation and the National Board of Fisheries. He noted down the phone numbers on a scrap of paper and returned to the kitchen table. The phone rang. It was Linda, wondering why he hadn’t been in touch.