Spy Out the Land (20 page)

She tried to calm herself. She knew there was no advantage in pursuing the complaint, either personally or professionally. He had made up his mind so she had better make the best of a bad lot,
at least for the time being. She dropped her gaze and gave the tiniest of nods to show her acquiescence.

Harmigan smiled reassuringly and placed a hand on her arm. ‘That’s my girl. You’re under a lot of pressure, of course – we all are. But let’s try to stay calm and
not turn on each other and read false motives into things. Speaking of which, you said something interesting in the meeting.’

She smiled from one corner of her mouth, giving what she knew was a good impression of coquettishness in their own private language. ‘Just the one?’

He laughed, pleased she had snapped out of her mood. ‘Don’t fish too much! I mean that theory you floated that the kidnappers might not be left-wing terrorists but part of a feint by
someone else, framing them for it. Did I follow that correctly?’

‘Yes. What about it?’ She studied his face for clues as to what he was after, remembering how he had contradicted her in the meeting.

He waved a hand casually. ‘I was just wondering what had led you to believe it was a possibility.’

‘Nothing concrete. It was more of an instinctive reaction. It just all seems rather too neat, don’t you think? Something doesn’t quite fit. It’s a little too . . .
ambitious, if you know what I mean.’

He smiled. ‘No, I don’t. What do you mean?’

She got up and walked around the desk, thinking it through. ‘Well, according to the Finns, Dark claimed the men who kidnapped his family were black. His girlfriend has a Zambian passport,
and even though that seems to be forged it rather suggests they were Africans rather than, say, Americans.’

‘Yes, but what does that prove? There are plenty of African terrorist groups – pick a country, my dear.’

‘But African terrorists don’t usually operate in Europe like this, do they? I can’t think of a single other case, actually.’ A thought struck her, something that had been
nagging at the back of her mind. ‘By the way, what was all that stuff about Dark trying to kill Wilson in Nigeria? I never saw that in his files.’

Harmigan gave an apologetic smile. ‘Yes, I’m afraid we did have to hold that one back.’ He looked down at his shoes, Oxfords polished to a military sheen. ‘As for your
other idea, well, it’s an interesting thought but let’s take care not to get side-tracked. You were right about Dark being alive, but this isn’t really time for feminine
intuition. It’s terribly easy to get caught up in byzantine theories and see complexities that aren’t there, but if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and is carrying Soviet
weapons, it’s probably a Soviet-sponsored duck.’ He smiled again and clapped his hands together so they made a dull thud, indicating that the subject was closed. ‘Anyway,
let’s bring the car round, shall we?’

John Weale accepted the mug of coffee from Morelius’s secretary and settled into his chair. ‘Do you have any leads on where he went after escaping from custody in
Finland?’

Morelius gestured at one of his men, older than the others and with a leathery complexion and shrewd eyes.

‘Yes, we think he’s either on his way back here or already in the city. It could be he has an emergency cache of papers here, but even if not we believe this is where he will look
for the clues as to who took his family.’

Weale took a sip of coffee. ‘And do you have any ideas who that might be?’

‘Well, he told the Finns the kidnappers were black, but as I’m sure you can appreciate that isn’t especially helpful. He may have been lying, or just mistaken. And we can
hardly stop every black man leaving the country, especially as they might already have done so.’

Weale nodded. This was very good news – by his calculations Voers and the rest of the team should be boarding their plane right about now, and as the Swedes didn’t know who they were
looking for there was a very good chance they would make it out.

‘So how do you plan to find him?’

‘Well, we’ve put alerts out to the police and military with complete descriptions and photographs, and all ports and airports now have armed troops on the lookout for him in line
with your Chief’s recommendations to Interpol. We’ve also informed television, radio and the press, both here and across the Nordic region. They are running bulletins every hour –
a dangerous killer on the loose and so on. He should be in all the evening papers, we hope front-page. In the meantime, we’re putting together a map of all known friends and associates of the
girlfriend, Claire Nsoka. She worked as a picture researcher for one of the papers, so we’re interviewing people there, as well as talking to her son’s kindergarten and of course
interviewing neighbours.’

Weale was heartened. These were precisely the measures he would have implemented, and he wouldn’t have fancied his own chances against such a manhunt. ‘What about the flat? Were
there any clues there?’

Morelius turned to a colleague and rattled off instructions to him in rapid Swedish. The other man left the office and came back a minute later clutching a dusty-looking holdall in one hand and
a rifle in the other.

Weale stood and looked both of them over carefully. The holdall was empty, but presumably had been where Dark/Johansson had stored his emergency supplies. He picked up the rifle and stared down
it, then weighed it in his hand.

‘Not a bad weapon. I can imagine he could have done some damage with this.’ He turned to the Swedes. ‘Any idea where he might have got it from?’

‘We’re investigating that, too,’ said Morelius. ‘It could be that he simply bought it over the counter somewhere, as it’s easy to do with cash if you have the right
papers.’

‘How did he get his papers in the first place? I understand he had five passports on him. Presumably he used a forger – are there such people in Stockholm?’

Morelius nodded. ‘Our colleagues in Finland noted down the details on those passports, so they are of course all on the alert notice. But as you say, he must have had them made somewhere.
If the five were his complete collection, he may try to get another one made from whoever created those. There are very few people we know of here who are capable of such a thing.’

Weale glanced up. ‘How few?’

‘Well, we already checked out most of them and turned up nothing, but there is one person we haven’t yet visited. Would you like to come along with us?’

Weale smiled.

The city was a horror. Young women with figure-hugging jeans and Sunsilk hair clung to men with even glossier hair and even tighter jeans as they strolled carelessly through
the streets. And everywhere there were children, most of whom seemed to be small boys of around three years old.

In the rear of the taxi, Paul Dark closed his eyes and leaned back against the headrest. He’d managed to shut down his racing mind only long enough to catch a few minutes’ sleep on
the bus ride from the ferry into central Stockholm: abstract shapes redolent of despair had flitted beneath his eyelids, coalescing and hanging just out of his reach. At T-Centralen, he had changed
Kurkinen’s marks into kronor, then found a telephone booth and looked up the address. When Kurkinen had questioned him, he’d urged him to investigate car dealerships and the harbour in
Stockholm, but it could be that the Swedish authorities were in the midst of doing just that and if he tried the same he would simply walk straight into their cordon. But he doubted they would know
where he was headed now.

The car came to a traffic light and he forced his eyes open again, worried he might nod off. His body had initially reacted to Claire and Ben being taken with the classic acute stress response,
fight-or-flight: accelerated heart-rate, nausea, sweating, tunnel vision, the lot. But now he’d both fought and fled, his body had hit a brick wall and he was in a state of hypo-arousal,
overcome with a feeling of lethargy and unreality, almost as though he were watching himself from outside.

He sat up straighter. He didn’t want to return to fight-or-flight mode, but he had to regain his energy and lucidity. The first thing to do was address the fears he was trying to suppress
head on. Chief among them were the recurring visions of Claire and Ben either dead or being subjected to torture. If he were going to be any use, he had to accept that both were possible, but that
neither were likely. If the men in the masks had wanted them dead, they would have shot them on the island when they had the chance. They’d shot at him, and they had killed the Hanssons
without any apparent compunction, but they hadn’t aimed their fire at Ben or Claire. So they must want them alive. Hold on to that fact. Hold on to it, and don’t let go. It means this
is a kidnap, which means there’s a very good chance they’re still alive and being kept in good health. It means the men want something. You just have to find out what it is.

He smiled bitterly at his optimism.
Just.

The car was approaching the address he’d given and Dark asked the driver to let him off on the corner. He paid him and waited until he had left the area, then walked up to the apartment
block. He scanned the names on the push-buttons until he found the one he was looking for and pressed it firmly. Thirty seconds passed, and then a voice came through the small speaker.

‘Hello?’

‘It’s Erik Johansson. Please let me in. It’s an emergency.’

A moment later, he was in the lobby of the building and bounding up the stairs.

Weale went with Morelius and two of his men in an unmarked Saab. Twenty minutes later, they parked opposite the bakery in Gamla Stan. The younger officers marched towards the
building and Weale followed with Morelius, his right hand reaching to check his Makarov was in place behind his jacket.

Karl Vesterlund was a small man with piercing blue eyes, somewhere in his seventies. He showed no surprise or even anxiety at being raided by the security services, and Weale wondered if he
might no longer care whether the authorities questioned him. They walked into a small, cluttered living room, but there was no sign of any forgery work being done.

‘Where’s your office?’ Morelius asked in an even voice. ‘We can tear down the walls, you know.’

Vesterlund shrugged, and Weale realised he was simply resigned to having been detected – he had expected the day to come eventually and was mentally prepared for it.

He unhooked a lever from a bookcase and it slid away, revealing a doorway, then led them down a small flight of steps into a cramped room that contained a desk, a chair, several bright lamps,
ink, tape, scissors, a microscope and disordered piles of paper, many of them small, familiar-sized booklets.

‘My study,’ Vesterlund said with a rueful smile.

Morelius showed him the Finns’ photograph of Dark, and he leaned down and peered at it. He shuffled over to a filing cabinet and took out a ledger, which he placed on the desk and started
leafing through until he found what he was looking for – a small stamp-like photograph that he offered to Morelius.

‘Here he is.’

In the apartment block in Hägersten, a lanky young man stood on the landing peering out of the flat. He was dressed in nothing but a pair of white underpants. Dark
recognised him: it was Jonas, the boyfriend Marta had supposedly broken up with so disastrously that Claire had needed to rush round to offer comfort. So perhaps that had been a lie, though to hide
what he didn’t know. But Claire had consulted with Marta about that, so hopefully it wasn’t the only thing she’d taken her into her confidence about.

Jonas started to speak but Dark lifted a finger to his lips and hurried him back into the flat. The living room was small but well ordered, with orange and pink Marimekko curtains and two lounge
chairs in birch, chrome and leather. Expensive, tasteful stuff, confirming his suspicion they were middle-class dropouts, no doubt funding their rebellion with their parents’ money. He walked
through to find Marta Österberg standing in the kitchen in her nightdress.

‘Erik? You look different. You’ve shaved. You said there was an emergency?’

‘I need to talk to you about Claire. She and Ben are missing.’

She stared at him. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Someone’s kidnapped them, and I need to find out who. Claire had a false passport, and I think you or someone else in your organisation arranged it for her. I know we’ve never
seen eye to eye, but I need your help. I need you to tell me her real name and anything else you know about her past. Please.’

Marta met his gaze with an appraising one of her own. She had indeed never liked him: he was arrogant and apathetic, and she couldn’t understand what Claire saw in him. But his desperation
rang true, and she couldn’t think of any plausible reason for him to invent such a story anyway. Jonas was trying to catch her attention out of the corner of her eye, but she decided to trust
her own instincts.

‘Her name is Hope Charamba. That’s all I know.’

‘Is she Zambian?’

‘I don’t know, I’m sorry. Who’s taken her and Ben? Have you informed the police?’

Dark ignored her, his mind racing ahead.

Hope Charamba.

It meant nothing to him, and could be from any country in Africa for all he knew. He needed someone who did know. His mind suddenly grabbed at a memory – a large reddish face in the Lagos
heat. Yes. Of course.

He did some swift calculations. After Kurkinen had dusted off his pride and the bruising around his windpipe, he would have sent Interpol all the names on his passports as well as the photograph
they had taken of him. There was a chance Interpol would have sent out a wide enough alert that someone in London could have recognised him. If so, the Service would now also be looking for him. It
was a slim chance, but he had to consider it nonetheless. And if it were the case, they would have provided the Swedish authorities with a photograph of him unshaven.

He probably had a window of only a couple of hours to get out of the country before the newspapers and radio and everything else conspired against him making it out without being spotted, but he
had a major problem without a passport. It would be relatively easy to visit another Scandinavian country – he wouldn’t have to show a passport at either end – but that
wasn’t going to help him get to Belgium. One solution would be to find the old chap in Gamla Stan and ask him to make him another passport, but that would be time-consuming and potentially
very risky.