The Terrorists (36 page)

Bulldozer then declared them under reasonable suspicion of having committed a huge number of crimes, such as treason, attempted murder of the Prime Minister, the King, the American Senator, and eighteen other persons specified by name, including Gunvald Larsson, Martin Beck and Einar Rönn. He went on to armed subversion, damage to the city gas mains, illegal possession of arms, illegal entry into the country, gross damage to the apartment house in Tanto, larceny, smuggling of arms, violent resistance to the police, preparation for narcotics offenses (they had found a bottle of cough medicine containing tincture of opium in the apartment), offenses against the food laws (there had been a dismembered dachshund in the icebox), and illegal possession of a dog, forgery of documents, and violation of the laws on games of chance. On the last charge, he had judged the strange wooden tiles as a game of chance.

When he reached that point, Bulldozer suddenly rushed out of the courtroom without a word of explanation. Everyone watched in astonishment. He came back a few minutes later,
contentedly tripping ahead of six or seven laborers who came puffing in carrying a coffin-shaped wooden crate and a large folding table.

He proceeded to take quantities of material evidence out of the crate—parts of bombs, hand grenades, ammunition and so on. Each object was shown to the spectators and the judge, after which it was placed on the table.

The crate was still half full when Bulldozer took out the dachshund’s head wrapped in cellophane, which he first showed to the National Police Commissioner and then to Stig Malm, who at once threw up on the floor. Encouraged by this success, Bulldozer took off the wrapping and thrust the head under the judge’s nose, whereupon the judge took his handkerchief out of his top pocket, held it in front of his mouth and said in a choked voice, “That will be sufficient, Mr. Public Prosecutor, that’s sufficient.”

Bulldozer then began to take out the remains of the decapitated dachshund, but the judge said emphatically, “I said that would be sufficient.”

Bulldozer brushed a slight disappointment from his face with his tie, did a lap around the courtroom, stopped in front of the mummy, and said, “I herewith request formal arraignment of Messieurs Kaiten and Kamikaze. May I add that I am expecting further evidence from abroad.”

The interpreter translated. The mummy nodded. The other Japanese smiled courteously and bowed.

The defense counsel now had the floor. He was a dry man, in appearance rather like a stubbed-out cigar, long since extinguished and abandoned.

Bulldozer looked absently down into the crate. He picked out the hindquarters of the dachshund with its attached tail and demonstrated the evidence to the chief of State Police until the latter turned purple in the face.

“I oppose the arraignment,” said the defense counsel.

“Why?” asked the judge, a flash of genuine surprise in his voice.

The defense counsel sat in silence for a moment, then said, “I don’t really know.”

With this brilliant remark, the proceedings collapsed, the two Japanese were declared under formal arrest, and the spectators poured out.

In the apartment in Kapellgatan in Solna, Reinhard Heydt was lying on his bed, thinking.

He had just taken a bath and the route from the bathroom to the bed was covered with outspread white towels. He himself, on the other hand, was undressed. In the bathroom, he had looked at himself in the mirror for a long time and had made two discoveries: one, that his suntan had begun to fade; and two, that there was nothing he could do about it.

For the first time, a ULAG operation had been a total fiasco. Not only had they flopped, but two activists, including one of their best, had fallen into the enemy’s hands alive.

Levallois had indeed gotten away, but that was not much consolation.

Their enemies were countless; in this case they appeared to be primarily represented by the Swedish police. He had seen on television the person who was said to be the “brain behind the capture of the two Japanese terrorists,” Chief Public Prosecutor Sten Robert Olsson. He appeared to be a chubby-cheeked man with a startling tie and satisfied expression.

There was something fishy about it all. Had this Olsson, “Bulldozer” as he was called, really been responsible for their defeat? Heydt found this difficult to believe—or rather, he was almost certain that it was an outright lie.

No, somewhere else there was another man lying on his bed, trying to figure out where Heydt was and what he might be planning to do next. And that man, whoever he was, constituted the greatest risk.

Perhaps it was that chief inspector who had appeared on television in connection with the strange events of the twenty-first of November. Heydt had noted the man’s appearance and his name. Chief Inspector Beck.

Would it be worth trying to lure Beck into meeting with him? Heydt knew from experience that dead men made the least dangerous opponents.

But on the other hand, was this Beck really the person most dangerous to him?

The more Heydt thought about what had happened, the more certain he became that his main opponent was someone else. Perhaps it had been this man Bulldozer who had tricked him and Levallois on the twenty-first of November.

But no. After looking at them both, he had been convinced that it was neither of these two—anyhow certainly not Olsson—who had magically managed to capture “Kaiten” alive without anyone being killed or even seriously injured. The big Japanese had been one of the physical aces in the same training group as Heydt. Just overpowering him should have been a virtual impossibility. Heydt himself wouldn’t have liked to try it and would have judged his chances minimal. Reinhard Heydt was a dangerous man, which he was proudly aware of. He had indeed come out at top of the course, but even so had had considerably lower grades than Kaiten in the physical disciplines.

Also, it was said that Kaiten and the other man had been overpowered and captured inside the apartment. That should have been impossible. And yet someone had done it, and it did not appear to have been any kind of mass conscription of police. Only three or so men, with Beck as leader, and one of them had put Kaiten out of action without killing him or being injured himself.

That man was dangerous, but who was he? Beck? Or perhaps one of the best CIA agents? That was always also a possibility.

Or could it really have been a Swedish policeman?

From what Heydt had seen of the Swedish police, that seemed out of the question. On three occasions he had seen this country’s National Police Commissioner on television, and once some kind of departmental administrator. Both had seemed to him, if not exactly idiots, then at least blown-up bureaucratic ciphers, with very vague ideas about their work, and a certain propensity for making meaningless, bombastic speeches.

The country’s security forces did not appear in public, understandably enough, but they seemed to be generally derided, though they could hardly be as incompetent as people said. They seemed to have had a hand in only a part of the arrangemerits
for the Senator’s visit—primarily the part that had been most disastrous from the police point of view. But the rest of the planning had been clever; Heydt was the first to admit it. Someone had tricked him.

Who?

Could it be the same someone who had beaten Kaiten and put him under lock and key? Someone who was sufficiently interested in Reinhard Heydt to be truly dangerous to him?

It seemed so.

Heydt turned over onto his stomach and spread the map of Scandinavia out in front of him. He would soon be leaving the country and he had tentatively decided where he would go first. To Copenhagen. Levallois and several other sympathizers were there.

But how was he to get there?

There were several possibilities. Some he had long since abandoned—scheduled airline flights, for instance, as they were too easy to control. Levallois’s method, too, which had probably been fine for him; he had spent five years building up the necessary contacts. Heydt had no such contacts. The risk of being betrayed was far too great.

To go to Finland also looked dangerous, partly because communications were well controlled, and partly because the Finnish police were said to be more dangerous than their colleagues in the other Scandinavian countries.

The exits remaining were few, but promising. Personally, he was most tempted to go by train or car to Oslo, and from there by passenger boat to Copenhagen. The boat itself would be a satisfactory retreat, maybe involving a pleasant cabin and elegant saloons.

But was that way the safest? Sometimes Heydt thought so, and sometimes he found the ferry from Helsingborg to Helsingör more tempting from a security point of view. Just before Christmas, that route would be extremely overcrowded. That was even truer of the hydrofoils between Malmö and Copenhagen, where things were chaotic at every season of the year.

There were other ways, the ferries and small boats from Landskrona to Tuborg and Copenhagen, for instance. And also the car ferries from Helsingborg, Malmö and Trelleborg to the
German Federal Republic and from Ystad to Swinemünde, which was in Poland now and called something peculiar, Swinouscie or something like that.

But the passport police were thorough in Poland and East Germany. No, it would have to be the large passenger boat from Oslo to Denmark, the Helsingör ferry or the commuter hydrofoils between Malmö and Copenhagen. When the Christmas rush was at its worst.

Though he hadn’t yet really decided, to be on the safe side he had already booked a luxury cabin on the
King Olav V
from Oslo.

He studied the map, stretching so that his joints cracked.

He thought for a moment about Kaiten and Kamikaze, but without anxiety. No police brutality or torture would make them reveal anything.

On the other hand, perhaps it would be a good idea after all to get rid of this fellow Martin Beck. A police force could seldom afford to lose the few good brains it had. Heydt had a rifle with a night telescopic sight. He had assembled it a few days earlier, and it was now standing in the wardrobe, ready for use.

But was it really Martin Beck who had taken Kaiten and Kamikaze and was now undoubtedly trying to lure him into the trap? He doubted it. But still, one couldn’t be sure.

Naked, Heydt went to the wardrobe and took out his rifle, dismantled it and thoroughly inspected the parts. Everything was in order. He began to assemble the rifle again, and finally took a handful of cartridges out of his false-bottomed suitcase, loaded the gun and put it under his bed.

Reinhard Heydt was right, even if his invisible opponent was farther away than he imagined.

Even by city standards, it was a long way from Solna in the northwest to the dreary suburb of Bollmora where Gunvald Larsson lived, south and also quite a bit to the east of the city.

Gunvald Larsson had just returned from the supermarket, where everyone had seemed more or less neurotic because of Christmas. Driven almost to distraction by the fifth consecutive repetition of “Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer” on the piped-in music system, Gunvald Larsson bought the wrong kind of
cheese—Swedish Camembert instead of Danish Brie—and on top of everything else, the wrong kind of tea—Earl Grey instead of Twining’s Lapsang Souchong. He had finally struggled his way through the check-out line and left the store, tired, battered and irritable.

After his meal he lay in the bath for a long time, thinking about the various possibilities. Then he toweled himself down, put on clean silk pajamas, his slippers and bathrobe, unfolded his large map of Scandinavia and placed it on the floor. He lay facedown on his bed after fiddling for a while with the pillows, for the struggle with Kaiten had left various bruises from blows on his chest and thighs. Then he devoted all his attention to the map.

There had been a time, lasting in fact for several years, when Gunvald Larsson had never taken his work home with him, and he had often managed to forget he even was a policeman the moment he entered his own home. But that time had passed.

Right now he was thinking exclusively about Reinhard Heydt. At this point he felt he almost knew the man and he was convinced that Heydt was still in the country. He was also almost certain that he’d make use of the crazy confusion of Christmas to try to slip out.

Gunvald Larsson had drawn some blue and red arrows on to his map. The red arrows predominated; they were the escape routes he reckoned most likely, and also the most difficult to control. The blue arrows were the most sophisticated possibilities. A number of blue arrows led eastward, mostly to Finland, a few to the Soviet Union, and some to the south, to Poland, East Germany and the German Federal Republic. To the west, blue arrows pointed from Gothenburg toward Tilbury Docks at the mouth of the Thames, to Immingham and to Fredrikshavn in Jutland, and from Varberg to Grenå.

There were blue circles around the fortunately not too numerous international airports. They would be easy to watch, especially since the recent wave of hijackings had prompted the establishment of relatively good control points that only needed stirring up a bit.

The really hot lines were in other directions. Red arrows ran down the main highway to South Norway, the European highways
numbers six and eighteen and the railway to the capital of Norway. From Oslo, Gunvald Larsson had also drawn in the sea route to Copenhagen with a broad red line, which he looked at thoughtfully for a long time.

Then he lowered his eyes to South Sweden. The broad red line from Helsingborg to Helsingör indicated the Danish train ferries, the Swedish car ferries and the smaller passenger boats on that route. The sailing frequency between Sweden and Denmark was highest at just this point, usually only fifteen minutes between sailings, often less.

Landskrona had two separate lines to the Danish capital—the car ferry to Tuborg harbor and the smaller passenger boats to the inner harbor—but the boats sailed at longer intervals, and not even at the height of the Christmas rush were there more travelers than could be reasonably checked. He was content with blue arrows there.