Bad Blood: A Crime Novel (40 page)

They emerged from the cars, which had been parked out of the way, by the high school. Almost invisible in the darkness, they made their way over to the pier and ran out along it, hunching over. The scent of the sea drowned out the faint ozone odor of the rainstorm.

They were close now. There was no hint of any surveillance.

They gathered around the gangway, dripping wet.

Chavez and Norlander went aboard first, quietly, with weapons drawn. Then Hjelm and Holm, followed by Söderstedt and Hultin. All had their safeties off.

They made their way past the bridge and moved toward the stern. Everything was dark. The boat seemed deserted. A few faint voices rose in the storm. They followed the voices until they were standing by a door next to some windows with pulled curtains. Behind the curtains they could see a faint, flickering light.

Norlander assessed the strength of the door, then got ready, his back against the railing. Hjelm tried to turn the door handle, but it locked. Norlander immediately kicked it in. One giant kick was enough. The lock hung quivering on the wall for a few seconds, then fell to the deck.

Inside what looked like a dining hall, five people sat around a screwed-down kerosene lamp. A young blond man in Helly Hansen clothes, three large, swarthy upper-middle-aged men in thick down coats—and Justine Lindberger in a rain suit. When she caught sight of Söderstedt in the rear, she seemed to exhale.

“Hands on your heads!” Norlander yelled.

“It’s just the Swedish police!” Justine yelled at the three men. They placed their hands on their heads.

The Helly Hansen man stood up and said in a Gotland accent, “What is this? What are you doing here?”

“Herman Bengtsson, I presume,” said Hultin, pointing the pistol at him. “Sit down right now and place your hands on your head.”

Bengtsson reluctantly obeyed.

“Search them,” Hultin ordered.

Norlander and Chavez searched wildly. None of those present were carrying weapons. The signs were starting to add up, and they were alarming.

“You’re the ones who called me,” Justine Lindberger said, as furious mental activity seemed to be going on in her brain.

“Where’s the computer equipment?” Hultin asked.

“What computer equipment?” said Herman Bengtsson. “What are you talking about?”

“How many more people are onboard?”

“None,” said Justine Lindberger, sighing. “The crew is coming in an hour.”

“And the guards? You can’t carry control devices for nuclear weapons without a guard.”

Justine Lindberger froze, thinking intensely. Then an idea seemed to strike her. She closed her eyes for a few seconds, and when she opened them, they were more resigned, almost mourning. As if she were before a platoon of executioners.

“We’re not smuggling nuclear weapons,” she said. “It’s the other way around.”

“Jorge, Viggo, Arto—run and search. Be careful.”

They disappeared, leaving Jan-Olov Hultin, Paul Hjelm, and Kerstin Holm in charge of Justine Lindberger, Herman Bengtsson, and three dark men with the marks of death on their faces.

Justine spoke, as though her life depended on getting the words right. “Herman and I belong to Orpheus Life Line, a secret human rights organization that is active in Iraq. We have to remain secret; our enemies are powerful. Eric was part of it, too. He died without revealing anything. He was stronger than we thought.”

Then she gestured toward the three men on the sofa.

“These three are high-ranking officers in the Iraqi army. They’ve deserted. They have extremely important information about the Gulf War, which neither Saddam nor the United States wants to get out. They are on their way to the United States, to be put under the protection of a large media organization. The information will be released from there; it won’t be possible to stop it. The American mass media are the only force that is strong enough to resist.”

Hultin looked at Hjelm, Hjelm looked at Holm, Holm looked at Hultin.

“You have to let us be,” said Justine Lindberger. “Someone has tricked you. Someone has used you.”

Hjelm saw Wayne Jennings in his mind’s eye and said, “You will never know.” He felt like he was going to vomit, but he had nothing left to throw up.

“In that case, they’re on your trail,” said Kerstin Holm. “We have to get you out of here.”

“Regardless, we can’t let the boat depart,” said Hultin. “It has to be thoroughly investigated. So we’ll take you with us now, quickly.”

“It’s your duty to protect us,” said Justine Lindberger, looking very tired. “You’ve led them here—now you have to protect us with your lives.”

Hultin looked at her with an expression of deep regret and backed out past the broken door. He slid aside. Holm came out. Then Herman Bengtsson, the three men, Justine, and Hjelm. They stood out on the deck. The wind howled. The rain poured down on them.

They moved toward the gangway.

Then it happened, as though an order had been given—as though they themselves had given it.

Herman Bengtsson’s head was torn off; a cascade of blood sent him down onto the deck. The three men were flung by cascades of bullets into the wall of the ship. Their down coats turned red, and down flew out. They collapsed as though their bodies had no joints. Kerstin threw herself over Justine; she didn’t think—she was a living wall. A bullet grazed her shoulder; she saw it drill into Justine’s right eye just four inches away. Justine vomited blood into Kerstin’s face—in one last exhalation.

Hultin was petrified. He stared up at the town of Visby, which rose like a distant, illuminated doomsday castle far away.

Hjelm’s pistol was raised. His body spun around, but he had nothing to aim at, nothing at all. He returned the pistol to his shoulder holster and suddenly realized what it was like to be
raped. He placed his arms around Kerstin, who was sniffling quietly.

Bloody, rain-soaked down slowly covered the nightmarish scene in a blanket of oblivion.

Everything was quiet. Visby harbor was calm.

As though nothing had happened.

Gunnar Nyberg needed to pee. He had been sitting motionless in a chair in the basement of police headquarters for several hours. Not for a second had his attention flagged. The two guards had played blackjack for a few hours, and then they had been relieved, and now a new pair of guards were sitting there playing blackjack.

In other words, the monotony was monumental. The architecture, without a doubt, contributed its share. The walls had been sloppily painted a light yellow, and the lights, covered by a faint layer of dust on top, shone a loathsome glare through the corridor. Now the urge to pee crept over him and struck in a dastardly ambush.

Food was delivered to Wayne Jennings. That was a worrying moment. The incongruous bowl of soup remained standing on the guards’ table for so long that the steam stopped rising from it. Their hand of blackjack seemed to be taking years.
Isn’t blackjack a relatively quick game?
his urge to pee said.
Up to twenty-one in a few puny cards, and then you’re done?

The guards looked at him sternly. Then they picked up the tray with the soup bowl, the bread, and the mug of milk, and prepared to enter.

They went in. They locked the door behind them. Nyberg remained seated in the corridor. He took out his service weapon, took off the safety, and aimed it straight at the thick door with his healthy left hand. He feared what would come crawling out of there. He was sitting five yards from the door, and he would shoot to kill.

Time crept on. The guards were still gone. With every second, his conviction grew stronger. He pushed his urge to pee back into the wings.

The door slid open.

Wayne Jennings actually looked surprised when he saw Nyberg sitting there with the pistol aimed right at his heart.

“Gunnar Nyberg,” said Jennings courteously. “Nice to see you.”

Nyberg stood up. The chair fell with a clang that echoed through the corridor, echoing back and forth in this wild beast’s cave.

He held the weapon steady, aimed at his heart.

Jennings took a step forward.

Gunnar Nyberg shot. Two shots, right to the heart. Wayne Jennings was thrown backward through the corridor. He lay still.

Nyberg took a few steps toward him, keeping the pistol aimed straight at the body.

Then Wayne Jennings got up.

He smiled. His icy gaze did not smile.

Nyberg trembled. He was six feet away. He emptied the magazine into the Kentucky Killer’s body. It hurtled back again and lay on the floor.

Gunnar Nyberg was close now.

Wayne Jennings got up again. The bullet holes shone like black lights in his white shirt. He smiled.

Nyberg shot again. The pistol clicked. He threw it aside.
Then he aimed an uppercut. This time Jennings would not get up.

He hit the air. There was no one there.

A terrible pain went through his large body. He had never imagined that his body could shake so violently. He lay on the floor; Jennings was pinching a point on the back of his neck. He stared up into Jennings’s serious face.

“Forget me now,” said Wayne Jennings. “You have to erase me from your consciousness. Otherwise you will never find peace.”

He released him. Nyberg tried to sit up, but he was still trembling.

The last thing he heard before everything went black was a voice that said:

“I am No One.”

The rain had not ceased. Some of Stockholm’s streets had been closed off due to flooding. A few historic buildings had been destroyed and had to be evacuated. It was worse in some suburbs. Entire neighborhoods were under water. The storm had taken out electricity and phone service in parts of Sweden. Now they were approaching a state of disaster.

Police headquarters, however, was still intact. But “Supreme Central Command” had reclaimed its quotation marks. They flapped like scoffing vampires through the room.

“I should have aimed for his head,” said Gunnar Nyberg. “I could have put a single shot in his head. Fuck, that was dumb.”

“You couldn’t have known that the guards were wearing
bulletproof vests,” said Hultin, “or that he had taken one of them.”

“I should have stopped them from going in.”

“There’s a lot we should have done,” Hultin said somberly from his lectern. “And above all, there’s a lot we
shouldn’t
have done.”

Nyberg looked like hell. In addition to his nose cone and the cast on his hand, he now had a large bandage on the back of his neck. Of course, Gunnar Nyberg shouldn’t have been there; he should have been on sick leave, sleeping off his double concussion. But no one could get him to leave.

Hultin’s owl glasses were in place, but other than that he was hardly himself. His neutrality had been all but blown away. Age seemed to have caught up with him. He looked smaller than usual; the era of this Father of His People was at an end. Perhaps he would be able to pull himself together before he retired.

He spoke with a slow, thick, almost old-man’s voice. “Both Gunnar and the guards escaped without permanent injuries. Jennings used Gunnar’s police ID to get out of the building—it was found a few hours later in a garbage can at Arlanda. It was a little signal for us. A ‘thanks for the help,’ I suppose.”

He paused and paged slowly through his papers, then continued. “What we saw was the effects of at least three identical high-precision automatic weapons with exceedingly effective ammunition. We can assume that they followed us by helicopter to Visby, came to the harbor, and took up suitable positions in the city heights. It may have been a productive collaboration between the CIA and Saddam; we’ll never know. Nor will we ever know what the three deserting army officers had to reveal about the Gulf War.

“Above all, we have to forget this case. The corpses have been taken care of. As you know, we had to use Säpo—they’ll take the case from here.

“Nothing has reached the media, but even if we wanted to talk to the press, what would we say? The case will appear unsolvable; people will keep buying weapons and hiring security firms. And maybe they’re right to do so. And you all know what Fawzi Ulaywi said when we released him—I’ll never forget it: ‘Fucking murderers!’ He was right, of course. And now his identity has probably been revealed. Maybe he’ll go underground and avoid being assassinated, maybe not. He, Herman Bengtsson, and the Lindbergers were the Swedish branch of Orpheus Life Line. Now there’s nothing left of that branch.”

He fell silent. He appeared old and tired. They had solved the case, in all its aspects, but now he was going to be hung out to dry, like a failed Olof Palme–murder detective. The demands for his resignation could become loud. And they would be justified—but for completely different reasons.

“Is there anything else?” he said.

“Justine Lindberger’s bank account was emptied a few hours after her death,” said Arto Söderstedt. “We can only hope that the emptier was Orpheus Life Line, saving what was left of their capital. Otherwise it went toward Wayne Jennings’s salary. The Lindbergers’ large apartment will go to their already-rich family; Orpheus will lose its Swedish headquarters and central office, in addition to four of its most loyal members. And everything else.”

Söderstedt looked up at the ceiling. He, too, seemed very tired.

“I treated her like shit,” he said quietly, “and she turned out to be a hero.”

“
Lagavulin
was empty,” said Chavez, looking small and insignificant. “It contained no control devices for nuclear warheads. And LinkCoop is an ordinary, computer-oriented import-export company, totally legitimate. The CEO, Henrik Nilsson, was
very sorry that its excellent chief of security Robert Mayer had disappeared. He took the opportunity to report it to the police.”

“Benny Lundberg died this morning,” said Kerstin Holm. “His father turned off the respirator. He’s been arrested—he’s one floor down.”

Gunnar Nyberg suddenly got up and bolted from the room. They watched him go. They hoped he wasn’t planning to go down and kill the unfortunate Lasse Lundberg.

Hjelm had nothing to say. He was thinking about the concept of “pain beyond words.”