The Nightmare (20 page)

After the match, Saga Bauer pads around the women’s dressing room feeling the tension run out of her body. There’s a taste of blood and tape in her mouth. She’d had to use her teeth to undo the fabric tape around her glove’s lacing. She looks at herself in the mirror and wipes away a few tears. Her nose is throbbing. She’d been thinking of other things during the match: her conversation with her boss and the head of the National Criminal Investigation Department and the decision that she was supposed to work with Joona Linna.

Inside her locker door is a sticker with the name Södertälje Rockets and a picture of a rocket that looks like an angry shark.

Saga’s hands shake as she pulls off her shorts, pelvic protection and underwear, a black tank top, and the bra with the breast shield. Shivering, she steps into the showers and turns on the stream of water. Water pours over her neck and back. She forces her mind to think of things other than Joona Linna as she spits blood-tinged saliva into the floor drain.

There are about twenty women in the dressing room when she returns. A round of KI aerobics must have just let out. Saga doesn’t notice them stop and stare at her in disbelief.

Saga Bauer is astonishingly beautiful, beautiful in a way that makes people weak in the knees. Her face is perfectly symmetrical and free of makeup, her eyes remarkably large and sky blue. Even with her pumped-up muscles and recent bruises, at five feet seven she’s finely shaped; most of the women in the dressing room would take her to be a ballet dancer, not an elite boxer or an investigator with Säpo’s security department.

Or they’d see her as an elf or a fairy princess, like Tuvstarr the valiant princess, able to stand fearlessly before the huge, dark troll in the paintings of the legendary artist John Bauer. John Bauer had two brothers: Hjalmar and Ernst. Ernst was Saga’s great-grandfather. She never met him, but she still remembers well the tales her grandfather told about his own father’s grief when his brother John, wife Esther, and their baby son drowned one November night on Lake Vättern just a few hundred meters from the harbor of Hästholmen. Three generations later, John Bauer’s painting seems to have miraculously come to life in Saga.

Saga Bauer knows that she’s a good investigator, even though she’s never brought an investigation to its conclusion. She’s used to having her work pulled out from under her or being excluded after weeks of hard work. She’s used to being overprotected and overlooked for dangerous assignments. Used to it. But that doesn’t mean she likes it.

She did very well at the Police Training Academy; after that, she went to the Security Service to be trained in counterterrorism and there rose to the rank of investigator. She’s worked on both investigative and operational duties, and all the while, she’s never neglected continuing education and she’s always kept to a tough physical-training routine. She runs daily, boxes at least twice a week, and not a week goes by where she fails to make the shooting range with her Glock 21 and an M90 sharpshooter rifle.

Saga lives with a jazz musician, a pianist named Stefan Johansson, whose group won a Swedish Grammy for their sorrowful, improvisational album
A Year Without Esbjörn.
When Saga gets home from work or training, she’ll lie on the sofa, eating candy, watching a movie with the sound off, while Stefan plays the piano for hours at a time.

Leaving the gym, Saga spots her opponent waiting by the concrete plinths.

“I just wanted to congratulate you and say thanks for a good match,” Svetlana says.

Saga stops. “Thanks.”

Svetlana turns red. “You’re amazingly good.”

“So are you.”

Svetlana looks toward the ground and smiles.

Garbage is caught in the twigs of square-cut bushes meant to decorate the entrance of the parking lot.

“You taking the train?” Saga asks.

“Yeah, I guess I better start walking.”

Svetlana picks up her bag, but then stops. She wants to say something else but has trouble letting it out. “Saga … hey, I’m sorry about what my guy said,” she finally says. “I don’t know if you heard … but he’s not coming to any more of my matches.”

Svetlana clears her throat and then starts walking again.

“Wait a minute,” Saga says. “If you’d like, I can give you a ride to the station.”

39

farther away

Penelope cuts across the slope at an angle. She slips on the loose stones, slides; her hand shoots out to balance her and it gets cut. She cries out; pain shoots from her wrist. Her shoulders and back burn too. She can’t stop coughing. She forces herself to look behind, into the forest, between the tree trunks; she dreads catching sight of their pursuer again.

Björn helps her up, muttering something as he does. His eyes are bloodshot and haunted.

“We can’t stay still,” he’s whispering.

Where is the pursuer? Is he close-by? Has he lost them? Not that many hours ago, they were lying on a kitchen floor while he was looking in the window. Now they’re running up through a spruce thicket. They can smell the warm scent of the pine needles and they keep going, hand in hand.

There’s a rustling and, crying out in fear, Björn takes a sudden step to the side and gets a branch in the face.

“I don’t know how much longer I can take this,” he says, panting.

“Don’t think about it.”

They slow to a walk. It is hard to ignore the pain in their knees and feet. Through brushwood and rotting piles of leaves, they keep going, down into a ditch, up through weeds, and finally they find themselves on a dirt track. Björn looks around and whispers to her to follow. He starts running south, toward the more inhabited area of Skinnardal. It can’t be far. She limps a few steps and then begins to run after him. The track curves around a grove of birches and, once past the white trunks, they suddenly see two people. There’s a woman barely out of her teens, dressed in a short tennis dress, talking to a man standing by a red motorcycle.

Penelope zips up her hoodie and sucks in air through her nose to steady her breath.

“Hi,” she says.

They’re staring at her. It’s easy to see why: she and Björn are bloody and dirty.

“We’ve had an accident,” she says. “We need to borrow a phone.”

Tortoiseshell butterflies flutter over the goosefoot and horsetail growing in the ditch.

The man nods and hands his phone to Penelope.

“Thanks,” Björn says, although he keeps his eyes glued on the road and into the forest.

“What happened?” the man asks.

Penelope doesn’t know what to say. Tears begin to stream down her cheeks.

“An accident,” Björn says.

“Oh my God,” the woman in the tennis dress hisses to her boyfriend. “She’s that bitch.”

“Who?”

“The bitch on TV the other day who was criticizing our Swedish exports.”

Penelope doesn’t hear. She tries to smile engagingly at the young woman as she taps out Claudia’s number. But her hands are shaking too hard and she hits the wrong number. She has to stop and try again. Her hands shake so fiercely she’s afraid she’ll drop the phone. The young woman is whispering into her boyfriend’s ear.

She plants herself in front of Penelope. “Tell me something. Do you think that hardworking people, people working sixty hours a week, are supposed to pay for people like you to just say whatever the hell you want on some television program?”

Penelope can’t comprehend why the young woman is so angry. She’s unable to concentrate on her question. Her thoughts whirl as she anxiously scans the area between the trees while she hears the signal go through. The ringing crackles. It sounds far away.

“So real work’s not good enough for you?” The woman is really working herself up.

Penelope pleads with Björn with her eyes to help her out here and calm the woman down. She sighs as she hears her mother’s voice on the answering machine.

“This is Claudia Fernandez. I can’t answer the phone right now, but please leave a message and I’ll call back as soon as I can.”

Tears run down her cheeks and her knees are about to buckle. She’s so tired. She holds up her hand toward the woman in a plea.

“We paid for our phones with our own money we earned ourselves,” the young woman says. “You do the same. Pay for your own damn phone…”

The line is breaking up. Penelope moves away in search of a better signal but it only gets worse. It cuts out and she’s not sure she’s even gotten through as she starts to speak.

“Mamma, I need help. People are after us—”

The woman yanks the phone from Penelope’s hand and tosses it back to the young man.

“Get a job!” he yells.

Penelope sways in shock. She watches the woman climb onto the motorcycle behind the man and wrap her arms around his waist.

“Please!” Penelope calls after them. “
Please
—”

Her voice is lost in the roar of the motorcycle as it speeds away, spitting gravel. Björn and Penelope start to run after them, but the motorcycle disappears down the track to Skinnardal.

“Björn,” Penelope says as she stops running.

“Keep running,” he yells.

She’s out of breath. This is a mistake, she thinks. He stops and looks at her. Then he starts walking away.

“Wait! He understands how we think!” she yells after him. “We have to outwit him!”

Björn walks more slowly and then turns to look at her. He keeps on walking backward.

“We’ve got to get help,” he pleads.

“Not yet.”

Björn slowly comes to a stop and then returns. He takes her by the shoulders.

“Penny, I’m sure that it’s only ten minutes or so to the first house. You can do it. I’ll help—”

“We have to get back in the woods,” Penelope says. “I know that I’m right.”

She pulls off her hair band and throws it on the road in front of them and heads back into the woods, away from habitation.

Björn looks behind him down the road, then reluctantly follows Penelope. Penelope hears him behind her. He catches up and takes her hand. They’re now running side by side but not all that fast. A small inlet of water bars their way. They wade across for approximately forty meters, the water coming up to their thighs. Out of the water, they start to jog again in shoes that are completely soaked.

Ten minutes later, Penelope slows down. She stops, takes a deep breath, lifts her gaze, and looks around. Somehow she no longer senses the cold presence of their pursuer. Björn asks, “When we were in the house, why’d you yell for him to come in?”

“He’d have just come inside anyway—but he didn’t expect a voice.”

“Still—”

“Up to now, he’s been one step ahead of us,” she continues. “We’ve been scared and he knows how fear makes people stupid.”

“Still, even stupid people don’t say, ‘Come on in,’” Björn says, and a tired smile crosses his face.

“That’s why we can’t head toward Skinnardal. We have to zigzag, change our direction all the time, keep deep in the forest, and head toward nothing at all.”

“Right.”

She observes his exhausted face and his white, dry lips.

“I think we have to think it out now. Try new ideas. I believe that we have to … instead of heading for the mainland … we have to keep going farther out into the archipelago and away from the mainland.”

“No one in their right mind would do that.”

“Can you keep going?” she asks softly.

He nods and they begin to move again, farther into the forest, farther away from roads, from houses and people.

40

the replacement

Axel Riessen unbuttons the cuff links from his stiff shirtsleeves and puts them in the bronze bowl on his dresser. The cuff links were an inheritance from his grandfather, Admiral Riessen. This design is civilian, however, a heraldry design consisting of two crossed palm leaves.

Axel studies himself in the mirror next to the closet door. He loosens his tie and then walks to the bed and sits down on the edge. The radiator hisses and he thinks he can make out snatches of music coming through the wall.

The music is coming from his younger brother’s apartment in their shared family mansion. One lone violin, Axel thinks as his mind gathers the fragments he’s heard into a whole. It’s the Bach Violin Sonata in G Minor, the first movement, an adagio, but played much more slowly than conventional interpretations. Axel hears not only the musical notes but also every single overtone as well as an accidental bump against the body of the violin.

His hands long to take up a violin. His fingers tremble when the music changes tempo. It’s been a long time since he’s let his fingers play with the music, running over the strings and up and down the fingerboard.

When the telephone rings, the music in his head falls silent. He gets up from the bed and rubs his eyes. He’s very tired and hasn’t slept much for the past week.

Caller ID reveals that the call is coming from Parliament. Axel clears his throat before he answers in a calm voice.

“Axel Riessen.”

“I’m Jörgen Grünlicht. As you may know, I’m the president of the Government Panel for Foreign Affairs.

“Good evening.”

“Please excuse me for calling so late.”

“I was still awake.”

“They told me you might be,” Jörgen Grünlicht says. He hesitates before continuing. “We’ve had an extra board meeting just now where we decided to try to recruit you for the post of general director for the ISP.”

“I understand.”

There’s silence on the other end. Grünlicht adds hastily, “I assume you know what happened to Carl Palmcrona.”

“I read about it in the newspaper.”

Grünlicht clears his throat and says something that Axel can’t understand before Grünlicht raises his voice again. “You are already aware of our work and—if you accept our nomination—could get up to speed fairly quickly.”

“I’d have to resign my UN post,” Axel replies.

“Is that a problem?” Grünlicht’s voice seems worried.

“No, not really—I’ve been taking some time off anyway.”

“We’ll be able to discuss the terms, of course … but there’s nothing that’s off the table,” Grünlicht says. “You must already know we would like you on board. There’s no point in keeping that a secret.”