They are all interrupted as Jens Svanehjalm, the chief prosecutor, strides into the room.
97
Air-conditioning has chilled his car, but that’s not what makes Pontus Salman’s hands shake on the steering wheel. He’s already crossing the bridge to Lidingo Island. A ferry to Finland is leaving its dock and beyond Millesgarden someone is burning leaves.
A few hours ago, he’d been in his tiny flat-bottomed rowboat trying to hold a rifle barrel to his mouth. The metal taste is still on his tongue, and he can still hear the scraping sound it made against his teeth.
A woman in a straggly blue punk haircut was jogging onto the dock with the detective. She’d called him gently in her middle-aged voice to come closer. She had to tell him something important. She was wearing bright red lipstick. She’d brought him to a small gray room. He found out her name was Gunilla and she was a psychologist. She’d talked to him deeply about what he had intended to do when he rowed out onto the lake.
“Why do you want to die?” she’d asked plainly.
“I really don’t want to,” he’d answered truthfully, surprising her.
She was taken aback a moment and then they began to really talk. He’d answered all her questions and became more and more convinced that he did not want to die. He’d rather run and he began to plan where he could go. He’d just disappear and start a new life as someone else.
The car had crossed the bridge. Pontus Salman looks at his watch and feels tremendous relief that, by now, Veronique’s plane must have left Swedish airspace.
He’d told Veronique about French Polynesia and now he can fantasize: he sees her emerge from the airport carrying her light blue carry-on. She’s wearing a broad-brimmed hat, which she has to hold down in the breeze. Why couldn’t he escape, too?
The only thing he needs is his passport from his desk drawer.
I don’t want to die, Pontus Salman thinks as he watches traffic rush by.
He’d rowed out into the lake to flee having to reap his nightmare, but he just couldn’t pull the trigger.
I’ll take any plane at all, he thinks. Iceland, Japan, or Brazil. If Raphael Guidi really wants me dead, he’d have killed me already.
Pontus Salman drives up to his garage and gets out. He takes a deep breath to smell the warm stones under his feet, the car exhaust, the fresh smell of growing plants.
The street seems abandoned with everyone at work and even the children still in school for a few more days.
Pontus Salman unlocks the door and walks in. All the lights in the house are off and the curtains are drawn.
He has to go downstairs to get his passport from his office.
Once on the lower level, he pauses as he hears something strange, as if a wet blanket is being pulled across a tile floor.
“Veronique?” he asks in a strangled voice.
Pontus Salman can see light from the pool dapple against a white stone wall. With his heart racing, he slowly, silently, walks toward the pool.
98
Chief Prosecutor Jens Svanehjalm greets Saga Bauer, Joona Linna, and Carlos Eliasson quietly, gestures them to a seat, and then sits down. The material Anja Larsson collected is spread over the coffee table in front of him. Svanehjalm takes a sip of his soy coffee and looks at the top picture before he turns to Carlos.
“You’ll have a hard time convincing me,” he says.
“But we will,” Joona says with a smile.
“Go ahead, make my day,” the prosecutor replies in English.
Svanehjalm looks like a little boy dressed in his father’s clothes. His neck is thin, without any apparent Adam’s apple, and his narrow shoulders slump even though he wears a well-tailored suit.
“This is complicated,” Saga says. “But we fear Axel Riessen from ISP has been kidnapped as part of this slaughter that’s been going on the past few days.”
Carlos’s phone rings so she pauses.
“I’m sorry,” he says to them, and then into the intercom he snaps, “I thought I told you that we couldn’t be disturbed!” He listens a moment to the voice there and then picks up the office phone. “Carlos Eliasson here.”
He listens and then his cheeks flame bright red. He mumbles that he understands, thanks the caller, and hangs up.
“I’m sorry,” Carlos says.
“It’s nothing,” Jens Svanehjalm says politely.
“I mean, I’m sorry that I have troubled you at all with this meeting! That was Axel Riessen’s secretary calling from ISP. I’ve been in contact with her all morning… and she’s just gotten a call from Axel Riessen.”
“So what did she say-no kidnapping?” Jens Svanehjalm smiles.
“He is on Raphael Guidi’s yacht wrapping up the final details on the export approval.”
Joona and Saga exchange glances.
“So you’re all happy now?” asks the prosecutor genially.
“Apparently Axel Riessen requested a meeting with Raphael Guidi,” Carlos tells them.
“He would have spoken to us first,” Saga says stubbornly.
“The secretary says that they’ve been on the boat the whole day to iron out any differences. He says the agreement is long overdue and he would probably fax his signature in to the ISP this evening.”
“He’s going to authorize it?” asks Saga as she stands up abruptly.
“That’s right.” Carlos smiles.
“And his plans after that? He’s made plans-” Joona inquires.
“He was-” Carlos stops and frowns at Joona.
“Why did you think he would plan something special after this meeting?” he asks. “But yes, his secretary told me he planned to borrow a Forgus sailboat from Raphael Guidi to go on a long sail down the coast to Kaliningrad.”
“Sounds wonderful,” says Jens as he gets up to leave.
“Idiots!” Saga says as she kicks the wastebasket. “You must know he was forced to make that call!”
“Let’s behave like adults here,” Carlos says.
He bends down to pick up the wastebasket and the spilled trash.
“So we’re done here now, aren’t we?” Svanehjalm says quietly.
“Axel Riessen is a prisoner on Raphael Guidi’s boat,” Joona says just as quietly, but his words are rock firm. “Give us the authority to go get him.”
“Maybe I’m really dense, but I see no cause for action at all,” Jens Svanehjalm tells them, and calmly leaves the room.
They watch him leisurely close the door behind him.
“Sorry I lost it,” Saga apologizes to Carlos. “But this makes no sense. Axel was adamant he would never sign this agreement… at least, not of his own free will.”
“Saga, I’ve put two lawyers onto this case,” Carlos explains. “All they found was a perfectly legitimate export deal that Silencia Defense had put together. I assure you they went over it with a fine-tooth comb-”
