After the Monsoon Page 6

  “Not a sound,” Grip lied again, and then left.

  The small voice recorder that Grip brought to Husby in a pocket of his bulletproof vest was his own idea. He often took it along; you never knew when you’d need to back up your own version afterward. What had been said, and what hadn’t. He’d listened to the recording afterward, to the chaos and the shouting, but it was really only the last part that interested him, when the young man with the nosebleed said something in Somali.

  From that, he’d sensed a bigger picture. On Monday morning, even before the debriefing and the questions, he’d gone looking for a translator. He found the academic who did work for the security police, originally from Yemen, fluent in both Arabic and Somali. In his office, Grip had played the last few minutes, keeping the recorder in his hand. Sure, Grip could have started further back, but he was anxious to keep an outsider from getting the larger context. If he’d played the recording from beginning to end, the actions would have been obvious—and given the prayers and screams, it could have started people talking. And if some damn lawyer got involved, Grip had no out. He was just as entangled as the two police officers if someone started flipping through the statute book.

  “Yuhuudi,” the translator said, repeating what was on the recording.

  “Yup, I have ears too,” said Grip, with unnecessary annoyance. He was feeling uneasy and wanted to get this over with. Here he was, facing an educated immigrant—one who certainly wouldn’t brag to his friends about whom he was working for—about an operation in which Swedes, his own coworkers, completely lost control.

  “Yuhuudi—the Jew,” said the translator.

  Grip looked puzzled. “The Jew?”

  “That’s a Somali speaking on the tape, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “The Somali is saying that you need to find the Jew.” The translator was quiet for a few seconds and then said thoughtfully: “He seems scared to death.”

  “I believe he was. Thanks.”

  “What is . . . ?”

  “The larger context? Today’s Expressen and Aftonbladet are probably out by now.” Grip was already heading from the room. “But, please, let’s just forget about this.”

  The Jew. Something was going on with those Somalis, Grip didn’t doubt it for a moment. But this wasn’t about blowing up the Parliament or destroying subway stations. Naturally, that “Jew” was somebody, but it was only too easy to imagine what would happen if he reported the detail. His coworkers from the day before, and probably a couple of directors above them, needed vindication after their wholesale failure in the apartment in Husby. They’d put their heads together, dreaming of revenge, and Grip would bet a month’s salary that they’d find another opportunity to use the battering ram.

  That’s how it was when you were hunting terrorists. You’d get the smallest scrap of evidence—and then you’d go ballistic. There would be more shattered doors in immigrant neighborhoods, more screams, more kicks in the gut, and more people with bloody noses. And maybe they’d finally find something real, or maybe they’d only find a few more boxes of mobile phones and SIM cards, which is to say—nothing. Sure, Grip could live with that. But at worst, when everything had gone wrong and they needed someone to blame, the stink could blow back in his face. With the right mix of insider tips, angry Muslim representatives, and prosecutors smelling blood, he himself could be held accountable in a courtroom, because he hadn’t intervened before the splashing and screaming in the bathroom began. A goddamn little Nuremberg trial, you taking the stand to say you’d followed an illegal order. He’d end up as the face of the Waterboarding Association in Sweden. And the others would leave him holding the bag. They’d waste no time in closing ranks, shutting out the one who came along as an extra, the one no one really knew but that they’d heard stories about. They’d dig up all the old shit.

  Why did they think he’d bear the cross for his coworkers? Just for a good cause?

  Already on Sunday night, he’d told them that no one had said anything in the bedroom. Now he knew more, but it wasn’t worth the risk. And besides, who in ISIS, Al-Qaeda, or any of their supporting ranks and Koran-obsessed affiliates would be crazy enough to be called the Jew? No one. So Grip dropped the whole thing, erased the recording, lied again after the debriefing in the afternoon, shrugged his shoulders, and went on. No more bathrooms, that had crossed a line. At least, not with Ernst Grip as both witness and hostage.

  Grip was back in his usual hallway, trying once again to go home for the day, when an assistant yelled as he passed by.

  “Yes?”

  “Someone named Thor is looking for you. He said it was important.”

  “Thor?”

  “I’m sorry, but that’s all I wrote down. He seemed to think you’d know.” The assistant was new.

  “Could it have been Didricksen, Thor Didricksen?”

  “Sounds right.”

  Grip had never heard anyone refer to Didricksen as just Thor. Didricksen belonged to the top ranks of the security police, but, lacking clear responsibilities, he had the title At large. That is, he’d take on what none of the other directors wanted on their desk, the unpleasant emergencies. Usually matters from outside, and usually things that people with careers and political ambitions feared would make a stink. For items requiring special care, it was good to have someone experienced with the dirty side of things. It was said that he participated in very few regular management meetings. He acted through other channels, something of a detested court dwarf, who sat and whispered, glaring by the prince’s side.

  Besides, “old” Thor Didricksen’s age was hard to gauge. He’d seemed to be on the verge of retiring for at least a decade. It was assumed that he was waiting for a scandal of the right magnitude, and then Didricksen would take himself and all his dirty laundry with him. Only for all these years, he’d somehow managed to keep himself and those he protected out of trouble.

  Most people even avoided calling him Didricksen. When he called to find someone in the various departments, the person who picked up would say something about “the man upstairs” or “the dog on six,” with a gesture of resignation, and then you knew who you needed to see. Immediately. Also, Didricksen always made the messengers imply that people should know what the meeting was about, when in fact they hadn’t the slightest idea. The contradiction lay in the fact that in Didricksen’s world, very few knew much of anything. During the short periods that people worked directly for him, he was called simply the Boss.

  In the circle of ambitious middle-aged types at Säpo, the ones always looking to move up a notch, they often spoke in low tones about violations and breaches that bore Didricksen’s stamp. Mostly, it was about jealousy. The Boss had no regular staff, but from time to time, he took what he needed. You couldn’t go to him; he did the choosing. Too many considered themselves next in the pipeline, or, in any case, thought they’d done it—gotten “on the list.” Grip and Didricksen went way back. Perhaps that was what made people uncomfortable, when they found themselves alone with Grip at the coffee machine.

  “Should I call to say you’re coming?” asked the assistant.

  “Don’t bother, I think he’s expecting me,” said Grip, and walked toward the stairs.

  The dog on six. Something about his hanging cheeks. The floor of his office was covered by an oriental carpet from Afghanistan. “From before the war,” he’d point out, “even before the Russians.” A souvenir from a trip in the seventies. The carpet—deep red with black geometric designs—made visitors move cautiously and made the room strangely quiet.

  “Did you read the paper today?” asked Didricksen, when Grip closed the door behind him.

  Grip hesitated for a second. “You mean the apartment in Husby?”

  “No, no, I don’t care about that. And not the tabloids, but this morning’s Svenska Dagbladet.”

  At best, Grip skimmed the Dagens Nyheter online for breakfast. What could Didricksen be interested in, beyond the result of yesterday’s soc
cer derby at the Tele2 Arena, or the fan brawl in the subway afterward?

  “About the soldier who got killed,” Grip began. “Can’t say I read the whole article.” In fact, he hadn’t read anything at all, but only briefly glanced at the morning news on TV. Grip felt the Afghan carpet sag beneath him. “Did the Taliban blow someone up again?”

  “A soldier, yes,” replied Didricksen, “but you’re on the wrong continent. It was at a shooting range in Djibouti.”

  “Aha.” Didricksen hadn’t offered Grip a seat. With anyone else, he’d just sit down in the first chair he saw, but their clear division was one of few hierarchies he conformed to.

  “Just to be sure, I got out a map.” Beside Didricksen lay an open atlas, and he spun it so that Grip could see.

  Africa.

  Didricksen pointed at the map, his finger indicating the little thumbnail of land sandwiched between Eritrea and Somalia, inside the Gulf of Aden.

  With the mention of Somalia, Grip felt a vague sense of anxiety overtake him again. The apartment, the bathroom. “Yesterday—I was in the apartment of the Somalis.”

  “Drop it, nothing to do with this. There’s a fleet chasing pirates down there, and one of our men is dead.”

  Grip struggled to shift gears. “A Swedish soldier?”

  “Yes. A Per-Erik Slunga, hometown of Gothenburg,” Didricksen read from a page, “lieutenant, in fact,” he said, as he looked up and leaned back. “You see, we had a little discussion . . .”

  And only now did Grip start to get it.

  “. . . about how this kind of thing can be tricky.”

  Grip assumed that “we” having the discussion meant the chief of security police, the commissioner of the National Police, and those involved from the government side.

  Someone was worried, that’s always the way things worked, and that’s why Grip found himself standing here. But he still had no clear idea what was involved. “And now a Swede is going to be stoned to death, by Sharia law?” A feeble attempt at a joke.

  But Didricksen smiled. “No, no. The military has agreements when they’re on foreign turf, country by country. Swedish law applies to Swedish soldiers, no matter what trouble they cause, fortunately. But that also means any investigation falls under Swedish jurisdiction.”

  Grip nodded. And let go of the apartment in Husby.

  “So it appears, in theory,” continued Didricksen. “In practice, things might get more or less complicated.”

  Grip understood a little more.

  Didricksen returned to the atlas. His gaze lingered there, before he said, without looking at Grip: “Swedish soldiers are national heroes.” Raising his eyes, he continued, “And our politicians sent them there to do good. If our soldiers make a mess, someone treacherous could start asking what they were doing there in the first place. At the same time”—Didricksen stopped himself in mid-thought—“At the same time, we need to find out what happened. A man is dead, after all.”

  Right.

  Didricksen continued. “Not just any police officer feels comfortable in this situation.” The old dog played with a pen. “But during our discussion, I said I had an idea about how to tackle this. And a suggestion for whom to send.”

  “Down to the desert uniforms?”

  “Exactly.”

  “So how much do we know?” asked Grip.

  “Nothing, beyond that a Swedish officer got shot in the head at a shooting range.”

  “An accident?”

  “The reports from down there are muddled, and the context of that shooting seems . . . somewhat unclear. But yes, maybe just a shooting accident. Still, you know, people worry about matters like this. The Foreign Ministry, the supreme commander, the minister of defense . . .”

  Obviously. That’s why Didricksen was involved, and why Grip stood swaying on the Afghan rug. The truth was one thing; what to do with it, another.

  “And you’re the right man for the job, for the simple reason that you need to get away, don’t you?” Didricksen didn’t wait for a reply. “Get away, go where it’s quiet, have your own world, your own investigation for a while, that doesn’t sound so bad, does it?” There was something close and confidential in his eyes. “It’s time for you to rediscover yourself, Ernst. After what, I’d guess almost a year. What was his name?”

  They’d never discussed anything personal, but of course Didricksen knew. He, if anyone.

  “His name was Ben,” Grip said.

  “A man must mourn properly, there’s no way around it. Otherwise you can get lost in missing a person, the way so many do. And sometimes a little privacy helps you find a way out.”

  “Maybe,” said Grip. He stood silent for a few seconds and added: “And when has the Boss decided I’m leaving?”

  “Tomorrow—via Paris.”

  “Djibouti?” Grip said, without hiding his skepticism.

  “Yes.”

  “An invented country?”

  “From what I understand.”

  “Like Monaco?”

  “Not exactly.”

  10

  Djibouti. Little more than a stretch of stony desert and oppressive heat. A colonial leftover, a shard of a country, and a city by the same name. A backwater with only one thing to offer the world: its location. At the crossroads of ship traffic to and from the Suez Canal, the pirate-infested Gulf of Aden, the turmoil of the Arab world, the tentacles of Al-Qaeda and ISIS, the civil wars of Sudan and Ethiopia to the west, and the total anarchy of Somali in the east—there lay Djibouti. An oasis of apparent order, for anyone willing to pay. South of the international airport, the Americans had thousands of troops stationed, in their ever-expanding and only permanent base on the African continent. North of the airport, the French kept their installations, while also housing half a brigade of Foreign Legion soldiers in another part of the city. A flurry of other uniforms came and went.

  Grip stepped out of the air-conditioned Air France plane straight into an oven. Africa. It had been a while. The air actually shimmered in the heat. Already, as he turned toward passport control and customs, the sweat was dripping down his back. Grip carried a stack of papers he’d been handed before he left and hadn’t really examined, but after a few stern glances, his passport got stamped with a visa. None of the officials asked questions, not to a single person in the line. Everyone who came to Djibouti obviously had a job to do. The posters advertising desert ruins and camel caravans were merely for show. Grip didn’t see anyone among the passengers who looked like a tourist. You arrived in Djibouti either as crew cut military, or with a briefcase and laptop for business.

  A dozen aggressive taxi drivers swarmed in the arrival hall, but they stopped when they saw that Grip had someone waiting. His eyes met the gaze of a tall, ruddy man with a cautious smile. Grip had no idea who’d be meeting him, but he’d spotted the small blue-and-yellow flag on the desert uniform.

  “Hej?” the man said in Swedish, more a question than greeting.

  “Yes, I’m the one,” Grip replied, and kept walking.

  The man, who introduced himself as Captain Tommy Mickels, wore the black armband of the military police on one bicep, marked with a big MP. “I have the car right out here,” he said, pointing through the glass doors.

  They loaded Grip’s bags into the white jeep and got in. Once the engine was running, it took a few more minutes for the air conditioner to cool things down. Grip sensed Mickels’s hesitation.

  “So, where will it be?” Grip asked.

  “The commander is expecting you.”

  “The commander?”

  “The captain of the Sveaborg. He’s the top brass, in charge of all the Swedes on this mission.”

  “And he knows I’m here?”

  Mickels smiled without looking at him. “Everyone knows you’re here.”

  People within the ranks always worried whenever an outsider stepped in. Grip hadn’t expected anything different, but he was in no rush to make a courtesy call. Shaking hands with a nervous boss, t
hat kind of nonsense could wait. First, he wanted to know what had actually happened, and wasn’t that why the MP was hesitating? The car still hadn’t moved a meter.

  “The captain will be around, I’m sure, so why don’t you start by . . .”

  “. . . bringing you up to speed . . .” Mickels nodded. They pulled out.

  Turning off, they headed to Mickels’s office, not more than ten minutes away. As they drove, he explained that when the Sveaborg was out at sea, the Swedes who did shore jobs stayed inside the French base.

  The entrance was tightly guarded: speed bumps, barbed wire, lots of weapons.

  “Al-Shabaab and Al-Qaeda,” Mickels said, not needing to explain more.

  Behind the walls and fences, they drove slowly along the base’s neat grid of streets. A whole self-contained community: office buildings, little dusty parks, bunkhouses, a bar with plastic chairs and umbrellas, and rows of hangars.

  “Here.” White, windowless containers with sprawling antennas formed a little lunar base on the gravel, their air conditioners clattering in the heat. On a pole hung a limp Swedish flag.

  They stepped into the cool of a small meeting room. Mickels closed the door to the hallway, shutting out the sound of office work.

  “Water?” he asked, opening a refrigerator. Along the walls stood plastic crates of bottled water, stacked as tall as a man. Grip caught the bottle that was thrown to him. Mickels pointed to a chair, and Grip sat down. He tried to quench his thirst while he listened.

  The MP was well prepared, starting right in with a PowerPoint and sketches on a big flip chart. It had been just forty-eight hours since the shot was fired. And with cool sincerity, Mickels concluded that the situation was totally fucked up. Grip soon realized that Mickels probably wasn’t the ship captain’s favorite. He was a little too thorough and outspoken to be liked by a manager. Grip let the information wash over him, not bothering to take notes. The way everything flickers at the moment of takeoff.