“But we have a photograph where Palmcrona and Salman meet with Raphael Guidi and Agathe al-Haji in order to-”
“I know all that,” Carlos says hastily. “But we can’t prove what we suspect. A simple photograph is not enough.”
“So we’re going to just sit on our asses and watch this ship leave Sweden with ammunition we know is bound for Sudan?” Saga exclaims indignantly.
“Get Pontus Salman in here,” Carlos answers. “Get him to testify against Raphael Guidi. Offer him whatever you can as long as he agrees to be a witness-”
“But if he refuses?” Saga asks.
“Then there’s nothing we can do.”
“Actually, we do have another witness,” Joona says softly.
“I’d like to meet him!” Carlos demands skeptically.
“We just have to bring him in before they find his drowned body in the sea outside of Kaliningrad.”
“You’re not going to get your way this time, Joona.” Carlos seems to push himself back.
“Yes, I will.”
“No, you won’t.”
“Yes, indeed I will.” Joona won’t give an inch. Carlos looks at Joona sadly.
“We’ll never convince the prosecutor about this,” he says after a while. “But since I can’t spend the rest of my life sitting here and saying no to you while you say yes, well, then…”
He sighs, thinks for a moment, and then says, “I’ll give you permission to look for Axel Riessen in your usual role as our consultant. We simply need to check on his safety.”
“Joona will need backup,” Saga says.
“This is not a real police operation,” Carlos says. “It’s just a way to get Joona to shut up.”
“But Joona will be-”
“What I want,” Carlos says, “what I really want is for you, Saga, to bring Pontus Salman here from Sodertalje as I’ve already requested… if he can give us a watertight case, we can go after Raphael Guidi with everything we’ve got.”
“There’s no time for all that,” Joona says as he starts walking to the door.
“I’ll go get Pontus,” Saga agrees.
“And Joona? What are you-”
“I’m going to drop in on Raphael and have a little chat,” Joona answers as he walks out of the room.
99
After lying huddled in the trunk of a car, Axel is stiff when he’s finally allowed out. He finds he’s been taken to a small private airport. The landing strip is made of concrete and surrounded by a high fence. A helicopter waits in front of a building that looks like a barracks. A tall mast sticks up from the roof.
Axel can hear the screech of seagulls as he is made to walk between the two men who have kidnapped him. He’s still wearing just trousers and a shirt. There’s nothing to say, so he climbs into the helicopter with the men. He sits down and fastens the harness. One of the two men is the pilot. He manipulates the instruments on the panel before him, then turns a tiny, shining key, hits another control, and presses a pedal.
The man next to the pilot spreads a map over his lap.
There’s peeling tape on the windshield.
The motor hums as the engine takes hold and the rotors start to slowly rotate. The narrow blades slice heavily through the air and the hazy sunshine blinks across the windshield. The rotor revs more and more quickly.
A paper cup on the ground is blown away.
The engine has warmed up. The blades clatter deafeningly. The pilot holds the joystick in his right hand, moving it with small, square movements. Suddenly they lift.
The helicopter heads slowly straight up at first, but then it tips forward and they move off.
Axel’s stomach lurches as they fly over the fence, up over the trees, and then swing so quickly to the left that it feels as if the helicopter is tipping to the side.
Swiftly they put the rolling green ground behind them, along with a few lonely roads and a house with a shining tin-plated roof.
The helicopter engine thuds and the shadows of the rotating blades flick across the windshield.
The mainland ends and the sea opens up beneath them.
Axel tries to think through what’s happened. Raphael Guidi must have had everything in place. He’d phoned Axel from his yacht in the Finnish bay. He’d said that he was on his way to Latvia and heading for the open Baltic Sea, then Axel had cut him off. There could have been no more than a minute or two between the time he told Guidi he would not sign and the moment when the two thugs broke into his house and shocked him with the stun gun.
At least they didn’t rough him up. They made sure he was lying comfortably even if it was in the trunk of a car.
Half an hour later, they’d stopped that car and exchanged it for another.
An hour later, they let him walk on his own to the helicopter.
The ocean beneath them moves past as swiftly as a highway. The skies above seem static, cloudy, and moistly white. They’re flying at fifty meters and at great speed. The pilot talks into the radio but Axel finds it impossible to hear what he’s saying.
Axel dozes for a while and can no longer sense how long he’s been in the helicopter when he looks down to see a luxury yacht plowing through the rippling sea. It is huge, a white ship large enough to contain a light blue swimming pool and several tanning decks.
They drop steeply down.
Axel reminds himself again that Raphael Guidi is a very rich man and he leans forward to take a good look at the yacht. It’s really unbelievable. The ship is trim and arrow-sharp and so white it looks frosted. It’s at least one hundred meters long with a soaring captain’s bridge, at least two stories high, on the afterdeck.
The helicopter thrashes its way down toward the rings marked on a helicopter pad on the foredeck. The backwash from the rotor blades whips along the water curving from the sides of the boat. The helicopter hovers, sinks slowly, and then settles onto the platform, softly swaying. They land smoothly and wait until the blades stop. The helicopter pilot remains in the cockpit while the other man takes Axel’s arm to guide him across the platform. They stoop in the wind draft until they pass through a glass door.
The room they enter seems to be an elegant waiting room, with sofas and a coffee table as well as a darkened large-screen television. A man in a white uniform greets them smoothly and gestures toward a sofa for Axel to take a seat.
“Would you like something to drink?” he asks softly.
“Just water, please,” Axel replies.
“Plain or mineral water?” asks the man.
Before Axel can reply, another man walks through the door.
This one resembles the first man who’d escorted Axel from the helicopter. They are both tall and wide with well-coordinated bodies, but this new man is so blond that his eyebrows are almost colorless, and his nose looks like it had once been painfully broken. The resemblance ends there. Axel’s first captor has gray hair and horn-rim glasses. They move together as a team, silently, effectively and with no wasted movement, as they lead Axel down some steps to the suites below.
The whole ship seems strangely deserted. A beautiful little wicker suite on a platform has been neglected. The exquisite weaving has splits and jagged points that stick out from the edges of the chairs and table. Axel is surprised to see that the pool, which looked so blue from above, almost looks dusty. It clearly has not had water in
