minister.'
Anders Schyman waited in silence.
'The minister is innocent of the murder,' she said. 'As far as the police are concerned, the murder has been cleared up. The boyfriend did it, the strip-club owner Joachim. They can't nail him, though, as he has six witnesses that give him an alibi. They couldn't prosecute them all for perjury, but the police are convinced that they're lying.'
Annika fell silent and leafed through her papers.
'So no one's going to be brought to trial for the murder?' Schyman said slowly.
'Nope. It'll remain unsolved unless the people giving the alibi start talking. And in twenty-five years the statute of limitations will expire.'
She got up and put two photocopies on the deputy editor's desk. 'Check this out. Here's the receipt from Studio 69 from the early hours on July twenty-eight. Seven people spent fifty-five thousand six hundred kronor on entertainment and refreshments. Josefin rang it up- you can see that on the code here, and it was paid for with a Diners Club card in Christer Lundgren's name. Look at the signature.'
Anders Schyman picked up the photocopy and studied it. 'It's illegible.'
'Yep. Now look at this.'
She held out the invoice for the Tallinn trip.
'Christer Lundgren,' Schyman read, and looked up at Annika. 'The two signatures were written by different people.'
Annika nodded and licked her lips. Her mouth was completely dry. She wished she had a glass of water. 'The minister for foreign trade was never at the strip club. I think the Studio 69 receipt was signed by the undersecretary at the ministry.'
Anders Schyman picked up the first slip and held it close to his glasses. 'Yes. Could be.'
'Christer Lundgren was in Tallinn that night. He flew out on Estonian Air at eight in the evening of the twenty- seventh of July, you can tell from the invoice. He met with someone there and flew back in a privately chartered plane the following morning.'
The deputy editor changed papers. 'What do you know… What was he doing there?'
Annika drew a light breath. 'It was a highly secret meeting. It had to do with an arms deal. He didn't want to hand in his invoices to his own ministry where they could be found, so instead he sent them to the National Inspectorate of Strategic Products.'
Schyman looked up at her. 'The authority that controls Swedish arms exports?'
Annika nodded.
'Are you sure?'
She pointed at the verifications.
'Indeed,' said the deputy editor. 'Why, though?'
'I can only think of one reason. The export deal wasn't quite, shall we say, all in order.'
A furrow appeared between Schyman's eyebrows. 'It doesn't make sense. Why would this government do a shady arms deal? Who with?'
Annika straightened up and swallowed. 'I don't think they had any choice,' she said quietly.
Schyman leaned back in his swivel chair. 'You'll have to be precise.'
'I know, but the fact is that Christer Lundgren went to Tallinn that night on some business that's so controversial he'd rather get caught up in a murder investigation and resign than make it public. That's a fact. And what could be worse?'
She was standing up and gesticulating. Anders Schyman watched her with interest.
'I imagine you have a theory,' he said, amused.
'IB. The lost archives, original documents that would sink the Social Democrats for a long time.'
Schyman leaned forward. 'But they've been destroyed.'
'I don't believe so. A copy of the foreign archive turned up at the Defense Staff Headquarters on the seventeenth of July this year. It came from abroad, via diplomatic mail. I think it was a warning to the government: do as we say or we'll make the rest turn up. The originals.'
'But how would this have happened?'
Annika sat on his desk and sighed. 'The Social Democrats were spying on the Communists all through the postwar era, storing up as much information on them as they could lay their hands on. Meanwhile, do you think the guys over here were just sitting around doing nothing?' She pointed over her shoulder toward the Russian embassy. 'Hardly. They knew exactly what the Swedes were up to.' She got up, got her bag, and pulled out her pad. 'In the spring of 1973, Elmer and the boys at IB knew that the journalists Guillou and Bratt were on their heels. The Social Democrats began to panic. Of course the Russians knew. And they knew that the Swedes would try to sweep away all traces of their spying. So what did they do?'
She held out her copies of the news items in the broadsheet from April 2, 1973.
'The Russians stole the archives. The Stockholm embassy's KGB man saw to it that they were taken out of the country, probably in large courier's bags.'
Schyman took her pad and read.
'And who was the Stockholm head of KGB in the early seventies?' Annika said. 'Yes, the man who today is the president of a troubled nation in the Caucasus region. He even speaks Swedish. This president has one gigantic problem: he's got no weapons to fight the guerrillas with and the international community has decided that he can't be sold any.'
The deputy editor was fingering the papers.
Annika sat down on the couch to deliver her conclusion. 'So what does the president do? He digs up the old documents from twenty-four Grevgatan and fifty-six Valhallavagen. If the Swedish government doesn't supply him with weapons, he'll see to it that they lose power for a long time to come. At first the government refuses to listen. Maybe they don't believe he has any archives, so he sends his warning to the Defense Staff Headquarters. A selection of copies from the foreign archive- not enough to topple the government, but enough for the Social Democrats to be saddled with an IB debate in the middle of an election campaign. So the prime minister decides to send his minister for foreign trade to meet the president's representatives. They meet halfway, in Estonia. They make a deal and agree on the consignment of arms to be delivered immediately via some third country, probably Singapore. The army prepares for war.'
Annika rubbed her forehead. 'Everything goes according to plan. Except there's a hitch- a young woman is murdered outside the minister's front door on the same night that the meeting in Tallinn takes place. Through the most ill-fated coincidence it turns out that the minister's undersecretary has brought a bunch of German union reps to the strip club where the murder victim worked and paid the check with the minister's credit card. The minister's up the proverbial creek- his hands are tied. He can't say where he's been or what he's been doing.'
The silence in the office was tangible. Annika could see that Schyman's brain was working at full speed. He fiddled with the pad and the photocopies, made a note, scratched his head.
'I'll be damned. I'll be damned… What does he have to say for himself?'
Annika swallowed, desperately trying to moisten her throat. No success. 'I've only spoken to his wife, Anna- Lena. Lundgren refuses to come to the phone. Then I tried reaching him through his former press secretary, Karina Bjornlund. I gave her the whole scenario, how I think it all came about. She was going to try to get a comment, but she never phoned back.'
They sat without talking for a while, then the deputy editor cleared his throat. 'How many people have you told this to?'
'None,' Annika instantly replied, 'just you.'
'And Karina Bjornlund. Anyone else?'
Annika closed her eyes and thought. 'No. Only you and Karina Bjornlund.' She felt herself tense up. The counterarguments would come now.
'This is incredibly interesting, but it's unpublishable.'
'Why?' Annika quickly replied.
'Too many loose ends. Your line of argument is logical, even possible, but it can't be proved.'
'I've got the copies of the invoices
'Sure, but it's not enough. You know that.'
