The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden (26 page)

‘Yes. Stir things up.’

‘Well, what are you thinking?’

The angry young woman couldn’t say, exactly. But she went to the nearest store and bought a copy of the shitty bourgeois newspaper
Dagens Nyheter
, which was only there to be the tool of the powers that be. Damn them!

And then she paged through it. And paged through it some more. She found a lot of things that made her even angrier than her base level of anger, but above all it was a short article on page seventeen that really got her going.

‘Here!’ she said. ‘We just cannot accept this!’

The article said that the relatively newly formed party the Sweden Democrats was planning a demonstration at Sergels Torg in Stockholm the next day. Almost three years earlier, the party had received 0.09 per cent of the votes in the Swedish parliamentary election and, according to the angry young woman, that was too fucking many votes. She explained to her boyfriend that the party consisted of secret racists and was led by an ex-Nazi, and that they were all crazy about the royal family!

The angry young woman felt that what the Sweden Democrats’ demonstration needed more than anything else was . . . a counter-demonstration!

The part about the party’s views on the status of the king and queen caused Holger’s anger to flare up, too. It would be so wonderful to influence opinions in the spirit of his father, Ingmar, after all these years.

‘Well, I do have the day off tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Come on, let’s go home to Gnesta and get ready!’

Nombeko came across Holger One and the angry young woman as they were making signs for the next day’s protest. The signs read
SWEDEN DEMOCRATS OUT OF SWEDEN, NO MORE ROYAL FAMILY, SEND THE KING TO THE MOON
and
SWEDEN DEMOCRATS ARE STUPID
.

Nombeko had read a bit about that party, and she nodded in recognition. Being a former Nazi was, of course, not an impediment to having a political career. Almost all the prime ministers of South Africa in the second half of the twentieth century had had that very same background. It was true that the Sweden Democrats had only received a tenth of a per cent of the vote in the last parliamentary election, but their rhetoric was based on fear, and Nombeko believed that fear had a bright future ahead of it; it always had.

So the part about
SWEDEN DEMOCRATS ARE STUPID
was not something Nombeko could really agree with. It was actually quite clever, as a Nazi, to stop referring to oneself as such.

Upon hearing this, the angry young woman gave a speech, the theme of which was that she suspected Nombeko of being a Nazi herself.

Nombeko left the sign manufacturers and went to find Two to tell him that they might be facing a problem, in that Two’s disaster of a brother and his girlfriend were on their way to Stockholm to make trouble.

‘Ah well, show me a peace that lasts,’ said Holger Two, without knowing the extent of the misery that awaited.

* * *

The main speaker at the Sweden Democrats’ demonstration was the party leader himself. He stood on a homemade podium, microphone in hand, and talked about what Swedish values were, and about the threats thereto. He demanded, among other things, an end to immigration and the reintroduction of the death penalty, which had not been practised in Sweden since November 1910.

Before him stood about fifty like-minded people, who applauded. And just behind them were the angry young woman and her boyfriend, whose signs were still under wraps. The plan was to break in with a counter-demonstration just as the party leader finished speaking, so there was no risk of being drowned out.

As the speech went on, however, it turned out that Celestine was not only angry and young but also in need of a toilet. She whispered in Holger’s ear that she needed to sneak into Kulturhuset next to the square, but that she would soon be back.

‘And then we’ll give them more than they can handle,’ she said, giving her Holger a kiss on the cheek.

Unfortunately, the speaker was soon finished with what he had to say. The audience started drifting in various directions. Holger One felt that he had to act alone, and he tore the protective paper off the first sign to reveal
SWEDEN DEMOCRATS ARE STUPID
. He really would have preferred
SEND THE KING TO THE MOON
, but he would have to make do. Plus, this one was Celestine’s favourite.

The sign had not been exposed for more than a few seconds before two young Sweden Democrats caught sight of it. They were not pleased.

Even though both of them were on disability benefits, they ran up to Holger, tore the sign from his hands and tried to rip it to pieces. When this didn’t work, one of them started to bite the sign, thus suggesting that the wording on the sign had some basis in reality.

When even this did not attain the desired result, the other one began to hit Holger over the head with the aforementioned sign until it broke in half. After that they jumped on him in their black boots until they grew tired. The thoroughly jumped-upon Holger remained on the ground, but he had enough strength to whimper ‘
Vive la République
’ at the men, who immediately felt provoked again. Not that they understood what Holger had said, but he’d said
something
, and for that he deserved another beating.

When they had finished assault number two, they decided to get rid of the wreckage. They dragged Holger by the hair and one arm all the way across the square and into the subway system. There they tossed him on the ground before the turnstile guard and started on assault number three, which consisted of even more kicking, along with the suggestion that Holger, who could no longer move, ought to crawl down into the subway and never again show his ugly mug above ground.

‘
Vive la République
,’ the beaten but valiant Holger repeated as the men walked away mumbling, ‘Fucking foreigners.’

Holger lay where he was, but then he was helped to his feet by a reporter from Swedish Television, who was there with a cameraman to do a segment on marginal extreme-right parties with wind in their sails.

The reporter asked who Holger was and which organization he represented. The completely ruined and confused victim said that he was Holger Qvist from Blackeberg and that he represented all the citizens of this country who suffered under the yoke of the monarchy.

‘So you’re a republican?’ said the reporter.

‘
Vive la République
,’ said Holger for the third time in four minutes.

The angry young woman had done her business and come back out of Kulturhuset, but she didn’t find her Holger until she had followed the mass of people into the subway. She pushed her way through, shoved the TV reporter aside, and pulled her boyfriend down into the underworld for the commuter train journey to Gnesta.

The story might have ended there if it weren’t for the cameraman, who had managed to capture the entire assault, beginning with the very first attack on Holger, including the fruitless sign-biting. What’s more, he had managed to zoom in on Holger’s tortured face at the very moment he had lain on the ground and whispered ‘
Vive . . . la . . . République
’ after the two Sweden Democrats, who were both fit as fiddles and on disability benefits.

In its edited version, the assault was thirty-two seconds long and was broadcast along with the short interview on the news programme
Rapport
that same evening. The dramaturgy of those thirty-two seconds was so exceptional that the TV channel managed to sell broadcast rights to thirty-three countries within twenty-six hours. Soon, more than a billion people all over the world had seen Holger One get beaten up.

* * *

The next morning, Holger was awakened by the pain throughout his body. But nothing appeared to be broken, and he decided to go to work after all. Two of the three helicopters had missions that morning, and that meant a lot of paperwork.

He arrived ten minutes after the actual start of his working hours, and he was immediately ordered by his boss, who was also one of the pilots, to go home again.

‘I saw you on TV last night. How can you even stand up after that beating? Go home and rest – hell, go on holiday,’ said his boss, taking off in one of the Robinson R66s, destination Karlstad.

‘You fucking nut, you’re just going to scare people, looking like that,’ said the other pilot, taking off in turn in the other Robinson R66, destination Gothenburg.

The lonely Holger was left behind, along with the remaining pilotless Sikorsky S-76.

Holger couldn’t bring himself to go home. Instead he limped into the kitchen, poured some morning coffee and returned to his desk. He didn’t really know how he should feel. On the one hand, he was totally beaten to a pulp. On the other hand,
Rapport
’s video had been an enormous success! Maybe it would lead to a republican movement all over Europe!

Holger had realized that there was hardly a single television station worth its salt that hadn’t broadcast the clip of him being beaten up. He had received a sound thrashing. And it was good TV. Holger couldn’t help but feel proud of himself.

At that moment, a man stepped into the office. Unannounced.

The customer looked at Holger, who immediately felt that this was a man and a situation he wanted to avoid. But there was no way past the man, and his gaze was so determined that Holger remained seated.

‘How may I help you?’ he asked nervously.

‘Let me introduce myself,’ the man said in English. ‘My name is something that is none of your business, and I am a representative of an intelligence agency whose name doesn’t concern you. When people steal things from me, I get angry. If the stolen object is an atomic bomb, I get even angrier. And incidentally, my rage has been building up for a long time. In short, I am
very angry
.’

Holger Qvist had no idea what was going on. This feeling was not unusual for him, but that didn’t mean he was comfortable with it. The man with the determined gaze (who had an equally determined voice) took two enlarged photographs from his briefcase and placed them on the desk in front of him. The first clearly showed Holger Two in a loading bay, and the other showed Two and another man loading a large crate into a truck with the help of a forklift.
The
crate. The photographs were dated 17 November 1987.

‘That’s you,’ said the agent, pointing at Holger’s brother. ‘And that is mine,’ he said, pointing at the crate.

* * *

Mossad Agent A had spent seven years suffering on account of the missing nuclear weapon. He had spent just as long being determined to locate it. He had started by working along two parallel tracks. One was to find the thief and hope that both thief and stolen property were still in the same place. The other was to keep his ear to the ground, listening carefully in case an atomic bomb in western Europe or elsewhere in the world were to be offered up for sale. If he couldn’t get to the bomb via the thief, it might work to go through the fence.

First A travelled from Johannesburg to Stockholm and began by going through the tapes from the security cameras at the Israeli embassy. From the camera at the gate it was easy to see that it was in fact Nombeko Mayeki who had signed for her package in front of the gatekeeper.

Was it possible that it was just a mix-up? No, because why would she have come to the embassy in a truck? Twenty pounds of antelope meat could just about fit in a bike basket, after all.

If it had been a mistake, she would probably have come back when she discovered the mix-up, because in her defence it had to be said that according to the tapes she hadn’t been there when the crate was transferred to the back of the truck. At that point she was still with the gatekeeper round the corner, signing the document.

No, there could be no doubt. The secret agent from the Mossad, who had been decorated many times over, had been tricked for the second time in his career. By a cleaning woman. The same cleaning woman who had tricked him the first time.

Oh well, he was a patient man. One day, sooner or later, they would meet again.

‘And then, my dear Nombeko Mayeki, you will wish that you were someone else. Some
where
else.’

The camera at the embassy gates had also captured the licence plate of the red truck that had been used in the weapons heist. Another camera, the one in the embassy’s loading bay, had several clear images of the white man of about Nombeko’s age who had helped her. Agent A had printed out and copied several versions.

After that, he had set off at full speed. Further investigation revealed that Nombeko Mayeki had absconded from the refugee camp in Upplands Väsby on the same day she had taken the bomb from the embassy. Since then she had been missing.

The numbers on the licence plate led to an Agnes Salomonsson in Alingsås. There it turned out that the car was still red, but that it was no longer a truck but a Fiat Ritmo. So the plates were stolen. The cleaning woman was acting like a professional through and through.

All that was left for Agent A to do in the very first phase of his work was to share the recent picture of the truck driver with Interpol. This didn’t lead anywhere, either. The person was not a known member of any illegal weapons ring. And yet he was driving around with an atomic bomb.

Agent A drew the logical but incorrect conclusion that he had been tricked by someone who knew what she was doing in all respects, that the atomic bomb had already left Swedish territory, and that his focus ought to be on investigating all of the murky international trails he had.

The fact that the South African bomb was joined, throughout the years, by other nuclear weapons that were on the loose made Agent A’s job that much harder. In conjunction with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, atomic bombs popped up here and there – both imaginary ones and real ones. Intelligence reports mentioned a missing nuclear weapon in Azerbaijan as early as 1991. The thieves had chosen between two available missiles and taken the one that weighed the least. For this reason, all they ended up with was the shell. At the same time, they proved that nuclear weapons thieves didn’t necessarily have an advantage over the general public when it came to brains.