The Ice Cage — A Scandinavian Crime Thriller set in the Nordic Winter (The Baltic Trilogy) (34 page)

I wasn’t convinced, but
knelt on t
he ic
e, sweeping
the snow away with my hands. What was she talking about?

‘
I c
an’t see a thing. It’s flat as a pancake.
’

‘
Look, feel
. Don’t think!
Be one with the ice.
’

I wasn’t sure about being one with the ice, but
I took my glove off and f
elt the ice and she was right
,
i
t
wasn’t totally smooth. There were microscopic ridge
s. I put the glove on the ice and r
ested my cheek on it to get
as close as possible
. There was no visible order and t
he r
id
ges were all over the place
,
with
t
he whirling snow flakes from the storm constantly
interfering with my observation. I was about to give up, when I looked at Eva.
She was a
white, lifeless shape on a snow
-
covered ice y
ach
t. The Black Pearl was white, everything was white
–
one big whiteness.
I
had to hang on if
I wanted to see Carrie
again.
I did.
I really did.
Our life together had barely star
ted.
Besides,
Eva’s life was in my hands and
I owed it to her to keep going. I would never forgive myself if I didn’t give everything I coul
d to save her. I took off the gl
ove again and felt with my hand, t
rying to tune
into the ice.

66

He’d been excited at the idea of reading history at
Uppsala
University
, but
once he started
his illusions had soon been shattered.
Traditional
ly, history was a
nationalist pursuit
sup
posed to strengthen a nation
.

The only thing Boeck learnt in
Uppsala
was that
today’s Swedish
historians were
hell
-
bent on destroying the s
lig
htest hint of national pride.
Hi
s passion for
Sweden
’s historical greatness was dism
issed as naive and un
-
academic
, while his
patriotism
was labelled as reactionary
and sympto
matic of
a Swedish Finn.

His Swedishness had
already
been rejected in
Helsinki
and n
ow the Swedes were dismissing him as stereotypically Finnish.
He was labelled as neither nor, whereas h
e saw both as p
art of th
e
same history
–
t
hey
were one.
Finland
belonged to
Sweden
.
If it hadn’t been for some
cowardly
Swedish
officers
and a useless King
, Åland and
Finland
would never have been lost in 1809.
Helsinki
lost its guide
–
Sweden, while
Stockholm
strayed
and
has
neglected its greatness ever since
. A stron
g nation has
to harness
collective memory t
hrough
rituals, customs and
historiography
.
Boeck didn’t understand how
tax payers’ money
could be used to pay
academics
to pull apar
t centuries of Swedish culture
.
History was about making the n
ation coherent, not about deconstructing it according to so
-
called
post
-
colonial or multicultural theories
and other
neo
-
Marxist propaganda
.
In spite of the disappointment, Boeck
stuck to his
torical
studies,
more determined than ever
in his resolve for revenge.
This went beyond the personal. It was a matter of national interest.

67

Eventually
,
I thought I could distinguish a pattern. The ridges went in different directions, but not in all
four
. T
he mi
ssing direction must be east
, because
Eva had said that the wind
generally came from the east
–
from
St.
Petersburg
, so west must be in the opposite direction.
Looking at the ic
e, I wa
sn’t sure
I’d really seen it or if
it
was wishful thinking. I looked again and it
was true. It must be true. It had to be. I tried to estimate the aver
age orientation of the ridges, which
shou
ld give me a westerly direction, but
I didn’t know
h
ow
to keep it. I would have
to tr
ust my mental navigation skills. They’d never
been my strength,
but they were
o
ur only rescue
now, as
we had
no A to Z for fin
ding the way out of this
Baltic blizzard.

68

Lying in the yacht,
Eva
forced a smile when I gave her
a hot drink from the thermos.
Coming from her, it was
a sign of resignation, a definite sign that h
er polar clothes had lost their function. The cold had free reign and it wouldn’t be long before s
he was
deep
-
frozen.
I had to find help.

Before pushing on with the yacht, I checked the direction
by read
ing the ice
again
. It was difficult and
I double
and triple
-
checked. When I thought I’d found the west, I
immediately started moving
. We couldn’t be far from the outer islands of the Swe
dish archipelago. I
f we
’d gone in the right direction...

The wi
nd was too erratic for sailing, so
I had to
take turns
push
ing and pulling
the ice yacht.
When I pushed
,
it kept getting stuck on snowdrifts, but pulling was even harder. There was no easy way.
The storm was lo
uder than a Pink Floyd concert,
l
ike standing under a revving Boeing 747. I considered leaving the yacht, but how else could I trans
port Eva? She’d dozed off again and
I kept
struggling
through the storm, makin
g regular stops to check the ice
. I don’t know how long thi
s went on.
I lost track of time as I walked and walked in a semi
-
conscious
trance. It took
long enough for t
he pain in my injured foot
to return
. We wer
e still surrounded by whiteness and
I didn’t know where we were.
In fact, n
o one kn
ew and no one would look for us, or n
o friends
at least. O
nly foes.

Eva was buried in snow and
I was dragging a
pile of snow through a snow storm.
She was a ghost, her pre
sence only suggested by what was left of the mast
. The only reality was tactile, aural and te
mperature
-
related. I was blind and i
nvisible
at the same time
–
a white man in the snow.

After what
have must have been three or four
hours
, I spotted
a break in the clouds.
The flash of blue sky
gave me renewed energy
and I pushed on faster, but i
t disappeared as quickly as i
t had appeared
and
didn’t reappear unt
il what
felt like
an hour, possibly two. I
t was i
mpossible to tell.
But this time it was larger
and I started running. I don’t
know why, because being l
ost w
it
h or without a blue sky didn’t
make any differe
nce. Maybe it was because I’
d rather b
e lost in visible surroundings
.
It was
concrete, as opposed to the abstract condition created
by the blizzard. I
t
was about having
something to hold on to.
I ran as fast as I could.

69

It w
as the last thing I’d expected, especially as
I’d completely forgotten that I was walking on ice. It had been
unbroken and solid for so long that
I walked straight into the ferry channel with my eyes firmly set on the blue sky. The yacht
s
lid into the water behind me
. I panicked
at first,
but it seemed to be floating and
I managed to climb back in
.
I knew
that i
t was bui
lt for short crossings in calm waters
, but
also
that it had been
generously
peppered w
ith holes by Boeck and his men.

I was soaked, freezing,
but there was no time to lose and I paddled as best I could
w
ith the rifle. It was all I had
,
and we hardly moved as t
he yacht filled
with water seeping
in through th
e
holes. We were sinking and
Boeck wouldn’t be
there to resuscitate us this time. I was born in the
Baltic. I’d been a Baltic baby and the Baltic was reclaiming me, trying to keep me at ‘home’.
Over my dead body.

7
0

The
ice
yacht
definitely wasn’t going to get us across. It
was taking in
too much
water and
I
had to pull Eva into the freezing water
to
c
ross the ferry channel
before we
sank. This was insane. She was verging on hypothermia and I had
to expose her to ice
-
cold water, but a
bandoning her wasn’t an op
tion. Our destinies had been locked since t
he moment she’d saved my life the first time
and I was committed
to going all the way.
I needed something to drag Eva once we made it to the
ice on the
other side. The only thing I could think of was the sail. I rolled it into a tight bundle and attached it to the life line. I put the bundle between Eva’s legs, something to hang on to
–
like a drag lift. When I pulled her into the water with me t
he shock made her come to
.

‘
HEY! What the…
’

‘
We’re sinking. We have to swim.
’

Her only reply was a
faint moan.
Holding her under her arms, I half swam,
half dragg
ed her the 50 metres across the
channel.
I don’t know how we did it, but t
his
certainly
made up for my 20 lost ye
ars of winter swimming. I had to work out how to get her out of the water
. She had ice prods rou
nd her neck and
I had a rope. W
hen we reach
ed
the
ice on the
other side
of the channel
,
she had to help because
I’d never
be able to lift her onto it
on my own.