The Terrorists (35 page)

And about half an hour later: “I presume the idea is that you
rush through the door, while Martin climbs down from the balcony above theirs.”

“Yes,” said Gunvald Larsson.

“And I come crashing through the wall with a roar. What time will all this happen?”

“What time do they usually eat?” asked Martin Beck.

“Nine,” said Rönn. “First meal on the dot at nine, and it’s usually a pretty long one with lots of courses.”

“Then we’ll get them at five past nine.”

It was Friday the thirteenth of December, but no one made any jokes about that.

If any one of the three of them had ever doubted that ten pneumatic drills in an enclosed space would make an almost incomprehensible racket, especially with two crazily clattering trench-diggers and four hysterical paving machines as background, he was quickly disabused of that notion at two minutes to nine
A.M.
that morning.

Rönn was operating in the stairway with three men. Together they were doing a pretty smart job of boring holes just deep enough so that the wall would collapse at the slightest pressure. Rönn, incidentally was one of the few people present who had ever used a pneumatic drill before. The heavy machinery outside was manned by policemen wearing coveralls borrowed from the Highway Department.

Gunvald Larsson, who was outside by the elevators, had quickly decided that drilling wasn’t his forte. Although he’d turned purple in the face with the effort, the drill had kept slipping away and he’d only succeeded in kicking up a horrible din.

Martin Beck, meanwhile, was lying stretched out on the balcony one floor up, a light aluminum ladder beside him. The
family that lived there hadn’t raised any serious objections when the police appeared and evacuated them to another floor. The other apartment on the floor where the Japanese lived was empty. The buildings were so poorly built and the rents so high that many people who could afford to live in them preferred to move elsewhere. In fact, the multinational company that owned this building had recently sued the multinational giant that built it. The suit claimed breach of contract in respect to negligence, faulty materials, fraud and all the usual abuses involved in large-scale housing developments.

Through a crack in a drainpipe, Martin Beck could see straight down onto the balcony below. The two Japanese had been out twice to look down at the earthmovers and the paving machines.

Martin Beck’s group had estimated preparatory work inside would take eight minutes, and that was what it took. At five minutes past nine on the dot, Gunvald Larsson kicked in the door and hurtled into the apartment. The door, which was made of imitation wood, was immediately transformed into a buckled scrap of unidentifiable trash.

The larger Japanese leaped up from his breakfast, his machine pistol in his hands, and turned to face Gunvald Larsson. But at the same moment the whole wall to the right of him appeared to give way. Large sections of it came crashing into the room, together with Einar Rönn, looking truly ferocious with his Walther pistol drawn. And exactly at that same instant, Martin Beck kicked in the balcony door, discovering what great fun it was to kick in a door, even if this one was only glass and Masonite.

There was nothing wrong with the training and courage of the two Japanese, nor with their knowledge of the rules of strategy. They had been taken by surprise despite all their precautions and were under attack from three different directions. If they tried to resist, the three men in orange coveralls, presumably police, would simply shoot them dead. They said nothing, but the larger one half-turned toward Rönn and the shattered wall. Gunvald Larsson seized the opportunity and struck him from behind with the butt of his 38 Master, a fine weapon which Gunvald Larsson had purchased with his own
money, but had never fired at a human being.

Almost simultaneously, two small wooden boxes of about the same size and appearance as ordinary cigar boxes fell to the floor from the white sheet that served as a breakfast cloth. From each box ran a thread fastened to the bearer’s wrist.

It was not difficult to figure out what they were—two compact bombs, the threads leading from each man’s wrist to a detonator. If one of them had time to jerk the thread …

And why wouldn’t they have time? A swift jerk, the bomb would go off and that would be that.

Gunvald Larsson was perplexed. Then he noticed that across the room the giant he’d struck was beginning to come to and was already jerking at the thread. Five, ten seconds appeared to be left of life.

Gunvald Larsson called out, almost in desperation, “Einar! The thread!”

Then Rönn did something neither he nor anyone else would ever understand at all. Although he was one of the force’s most hopeless shots, he raised his Walther an inch or two and shot off the thread to the detonator with almost inhuman precision.

When the thread lay in a meaningless little heap on the floor, Gunvald Larsson threw himself with a bellow onto the man, who was in fact as large as Larsson himself.

While the two battled, Rönn turned to Martin Beck and the other Japanese and said calmly, “Martin, the detonating thread.”

Faced with two opponents and virtually disarmed since Martin Beck had struck his machine pistol out of his hands, the smaller man did something for which he could not afford the time. He looked at Rönn with a kind of strange understanding as he gathered up the slack in the detonating thread in his right hand in order to pull it. As he looked at Rönn and at the pistol, he seemed to be thinking: Why doesn’t he kill me?

With the man’s gaze thus fixed on Rönn, Martin Beck took a pair of office scissors out of his inside pocket and quite un-dramatically snipped off the thread. And when the man turned in surprise to Martin Beck, Rönn coldly clubbed him from behind with the butt of his revolver. The Japanese collapsed without so much as a sigh and Rönn knelt down and clicked handcuffs
onto him. Martin Beck pushed the cigar box to one side with his foot. It should have been harmless by then, but they couldn’t be certain.

The larger Japanese was at least twenty years younger than Gunvald Larsson and enormously strong, nimble and skilled in the techniques of judo, jiu-jitsu and superkarate.

But what use was that against a Gunvald Larsson in a mindless rage? He felt the hatred welling up inside him, a wild, uncontrollable hatred against these people who killed for money without caring who they killed or why. After a few minutes’ bitter struggle, Gunvald Larsson got the upper hand and proceeded to smash his opponent’s face and chest repeatedly against the wall. On the last two occasions, the Japanese was already unconscious, his clothes soaked with blood, but Gunvald Larsson kept his grip and raised the large limp body, ready to strike again.

“That’s enough now, Gunvald,” said Martin Beck quietly. “Put the handcuffs on him.”

“Yes,” said Gunvald Larsson. His china-blue eyes cleared.

“That doesn’t happen to me often,” he apologized.

“I know,” said Martin Beck.

He looked down at the two unconscious men. “Alive,” he said almost to himself. “It worked after all.”

“Yes,” said Gunvald Larsson, “it worked.” He rubbed his tortured shoulders against the nearest doorjamb and said, also more or less to himself, “He was goddamn strong, that one.”

What happened next could only be regarded as an absurd anticlimax.

Martin Beck went out onto the balcony and signaled for the noise to stop. When he came back, Rönn and Gunvald Larsson were struggling out of their orange coveralls.

A policeman unknown to them peered in through the ruined door and gave a kind of all-clear signal to someone behind him. One of the elevator doors opened and Bulldozer Olsson rushed with small tripping steps into the apartment, his head lowered.

He first looked at the unconscious Japanese, then at the ruined apartment, and finally let his jolly eyes sweep over Martin Beck, Gunvald Larsson and Einar Rönn. “Great job, boys,” he said. “I never thought you’d make it.”

“Didn’t you?” said Gunvald Larsson acidly. “What the hell are you doing here, anyhow?”

Bulldozer Olsson ran his fingers once or twice down the giant cravat of the day, an American political party tie featuring white elephants on a green background. Then he cleared his throat and said,

“Hitadichi and Matsuma Leitzu, I herewith declare you under arrest for attempted murder, terrorism and armed resistance to officers of the law.”

The smaller of the two men had come around and said politely, “Excuse me, sir, but that’s not our names.” He paused briefly and then added, “If what you said was supposed to be our names.”

“Oh, the name business will probably sort itself out,” said Bulldozer happily. He gestured toward the policeman behind him.

“Okay, take them to Kungsholm. Have someone explain their rights to them, and tell them they’ll be formally arraigned tomorrow. If they haven’t got a lawyer of their own, we’ll appoint one.” He paused, then added, “Though preferably not Crasher.”

Some of Bulldozer’s men came into the apartment, and the two men were taken away, one of them on his own two feet, the other on a stretcher.

“Yes,” said Bulldozer, “first-class job, boys. As I said. An excellent piece of work. But I still don’t understand why you do this kind of thing yourselves.”

“No,” said Gunvald Larsson, “you wouldn’t understand that.”

“Larsson, you’re a peculiar man,” said Bulldozer.

Then the crumpled blue suit floated away with the public prosecutor inside it.

“How the hell …?” said Gunvald Larsson when Bulldozer had vanished.

Martin Beck was wondering the same thing but said nothing.

It was all too simple. Bulldozer had tabs everywhere. He stuck his nose into everything and then tried to take the credit. Martin Beck had been almost certain that Bulldozer hadn’t succeeded
in placing an informer within the Homicide Squad, but now it appeared that he did have a man in the Violence Division.

Who?

Ek? Strömgren?

Strömgren seemed possible, but he’d never admit it.

“Well,” said Rönn, “the fun’s over now, is it?”

“Fun?” Gunvald Larsson gazed at Rönn for a long time, but abstained from further comment.

Martin Beck was studying the boxbombs. The crime lab would shortly take care of them.

Four hundred yards away, Strömgren sat smoking behind the net curtain. Since his conversation with Bulldozer an hour earlier, he had done more or less nothing except chain smoke. He was thinking that perhaps now at last he would be transferred to Bulldozer’s special group and get his much-sought-after promotion.

Benny Skacke was home in bed. His occupation at that moment was of a private nature.

“And where the hell is Heydt?” said Gunvald Larsson dejectedly.

“Can’t you think about anything else?” said Rönn. “At least for the moment?”

“What, for instance?”

“Well, for instance, that I shot through that string. That was as good as impossible.”

“How many points did you get at the last training competition?”

“Nil,” said Einar Rönn, his neck reddening.

“Goddamn strong, that one,” said Gunvald Larsson again, grasping the small of his back.

Fifteen seconds later he repeated it to himself: “Where the hell is Heydt?”

The formal proceeding against the two Japanese took place on the morning of the sixteenth and was one of the most farcical that had ever been enacted in any Stockholm courthouse.

In Sweden, the prosecutor in a case is supposedly appointed by drawing lots, presumably to create an illusion of justice. But if there had been any lot drawing, which was highly unlikely, then Bulldozer had certainly seen to it that his name appeared on all the lottery slips, because he behaved with a confident pomposity and an easy grandeur that made the very idea of anyone else in the role seem ridiculous. His suit was newly pressed, or rather had been earlier that day, his shoes polished, his tie a bright green with red oil rigs, maybe a personal gift from the Shah of Iran—which was what he himself maintained.

He had especially requested Martin Beck, Gunvald Larsson and Einar Rönn to be present, and the court was also packed with people who had come either out of sheer curiosity or else out of a sense of their duty to keep themselves informed. In the latter category were the National Police Commissioner and Stig Malm, who were enthroned on the front spectator bench. Slightly less prominent was the foxy-red halo around the Säpo chief’s bald head. As far as was known, this was the first time Möller had shown himself in public since the twenty-first of November.

The two Japanese had been assigned a defense counsel compared to whom Hedobald Braxén was Clarence Darrow and Abraham Lincoln rolled into one. After Gunvald Larsson’s treatment, the larger of the two terrorists looked like a mummy in some old Boris Karloff movie, but the smaller smiled politely and bowed whenever anyone happened to look at him.

Everything was complicated by the fact that the two Japanese were now playing dumb, so interpreters were needed.

The weakest point in Bulldozer’s case was that he did not in fact know the names of either of the accused. As an introduction, he read out fourteen different names from an Interpol list of wanted men. As each name was read out, the mummy and his more obliging friend shook their heads.

Finally the judge lost patience and allowed the interpreter to ask the Japanese for their names and dates of birth.

To this, the obliging one replied that their names were Kaiten and Kamikaze, and he also gave their birthdates. The mummy would not even speak.

Martin Beck and Gunvald Larsson looked at each other in astonishment, but no one else reacted. Clearly they were alone in knowing that Kaiten meant human torpedo, and Kamikaze suicide pilot. Actually, the men had also given the birthdates of Admiral Togo and Admiral Yamamoto, which would make them about a hundred and seventy and a hundred years old respectively, although anyone could see that neither of them was a day over thirty.

However, the Court swallowed all this information and the clerk industriously wrote it all down.