Red Wolf_ A Novel Part 3

An old man was looking amiably at him.

The standard phrase, he thought, shaking his head and swallowing his French reply.

The hall came back into focus. The other man went into the warmth and left him alone with the notices on the board: a storyteller session, a carol service, a concert by Hakan Hagegard, and a festival of feminism. He waited until his breathing had calmed down, ran his hands over his hair and took a cautious step towards the internal door, checking discreetly behind the gla.s.s. Then he quickly crossed the hall and went down the backstairs.

Good grief, he thought, I'm here. I'm actually here I'm here. I'm actually here.

He looked at the closed doors, one after the other, conjuring up the images behind them. He knew all of them. The cheap oak-coloured plywood panels, the stone steps, the folding tables, the bad lighting. He smiled at his shadow, the young man who booked rooms in the name of the Fly Fishing a.s.sociation, then held Maoist meetings until long into the night.

He was right to have come.

Wednesday 11 November

6.

Anders Schyman pulled on his jacket and drank the dregs of his coffee. The lingering darkness made the windows look like mirrors. He adjusted his collar against the image of the Russian emba.s.sy, stopping to stare at the holes where his eyes ought to be.

Finally, he thought. Not just a useful idiot, but the driving force Not just a useful idiot, but the driving force. At the board meeting that would begin in quarter of an hour he would not only be accepted, but respected. So where was the euphoria? The twitchy happiness he felt when he looked over the graphs and diagrams?

His eyes didn't answer.

'Anders . . .' His secretary sounded nervous over the intercom. 'Herman Wennergren is on his way up.'

He didn't move. Daylight crept closer as he waited for the chairman of the board of the newspaper.

'I'm impressed,' Wennergren said in his characteristically deep voice as he sauntered in and grasped Schyman's hand in both of his. 'Have you found a magic wand?'

Over the years the chairman had rarely commented on the paper's journalism. But when the quarterly report was fourteen per cent over budget, official circulation figures showed steady growth and the gap between them and their compet.i.tion was shrinking, he a.s.sumed it had to be magic.

Anders Schyman smiled, offering Wennergren one of the chairs and sitting down opposite him.

'The structural changes have settled down and are now working,' Schyman said simply, careful not to mention Torstensson, his predecessor and a close friend of Wennergren. 'Coffee? Some breakfast, perhaps?'

The chairman waved the offer away. 'Today's meeting will be short because I have other business to attend to afterwards,' he said, glancing at his watch. 'But I've got a plan I wanted to discuss with you first, and it feels rather urgent.'

Schyman sat up, checking that the cushion was supporting the small of his back, and fixed a neutral expression on his face.

'How active have you been in the Newspaper Publishers' a.s.sociation?' Wennergren asked, looking at his fingernails.

Schyman was taken aback. He had never really had anything to do with it. 'I'm a deputy member of the committee, but no more than that.'

'But you know how it works? Gauging the mood in the corridors, that sort of thing? How the different interest groups fit together?' Wennergren rubbed his fingernails on the right leg of his trousers, looking at Schyman under his bushy eyebrows.

'I've no practical experience of it,' Anders Schyman replied, sensing that he was walking on eggsh.e.l.ls. 'My impression is that the organization is a little . . . complicated.'

Herman Wennergren nodded slowly, picking at one nail after the other. 'A correct evaluation,' he said. 'The A-Press, the Bonnier group, Schibsted, the bigger regional papers, like Hjornes in Gothenburg, Nerikes Allehanda Nerikes Allehanda, the Jonkoping group, and us, of course there's a lot of different priorities to try to unite.'

'But it sometimes works. Take the demand that the government abolish tax on advertising,' Schyman said.

'Yes,' Wennergren said, 'that's one example. There's a working group up in the Press House that's still dealing with that, but the person responsible for pushing it through is the chairman of the committee.'

Anders Schyman sat quite still, feeling the hair on the back of his neck slowly p.r.i.c.kle.

'As you probably know, I'm chair of the Publishers' a.s.sociation election committee,' Wennergren said, finally letting his fingers fall to the seat of the chair. 'In the middle of December the committee has to present its proposals for the new board, and I'm thinking of proposing you as the chair. What do you think?'

Thoughts were buzzing around Schyman's head like angry wasps, crashing against his temples and brain.

'Doesn't one of the directors usually occupy that post?'

'Not always. We've had editors before. I don't mean that you would forget about the paper and just be chair of the a.s.sociation, which we've seen happen before, but I think you're the right man for the job.'

An alarm bell started to ring among the wasps.

'Why?' Schyman asked. 'Do you think I'm easily led? That I can be managed?'

Herman Wennergren sighed audibly. He leaned forward, hands on his knees, ready to stand up.

'Schyman,' he said, 'if I was thinking of installing a patsy as chair of the Publishers' a.s.sociation, I wouldn't start with you.' He got to his feet, visibly annoyed. 'Can't you see that it's the exact opposite?' he said. 'If I get you that post, which I may not be able to do, our group will have a publicity-minded brick wall at the top of the Publishers' a.s.sociation. That's how I see you, Schyman.'

He turned towards the door.

'We mustn't delay the meeting,' he said with his back to the editor.

Annika drove past the exit for Lulea airport and carried on towards Kallaxby. The landscape was completely devoid of colour; the pine trees dark ghosts, the ground black and white, the sky lead-grey. White veils of snow danced across the dark-grey asphalt, to the beat of the central road-markings. The hire-car's thermometer was showing eleven degrees inside the car, minus four outside. She pa.s.sed a topsoil pit and about three million pine trees before reaching the turning to Norrbotten Airbase.

The straight road leading to the base was endless, monotonous, the ground on both sides flat and with no sign of vegetation, the pines squat and feeble. After a gentle right-hand curve, gates and barriers suddenly came into view, with a large security block, and behind a tall fence she could make out buildings and car parks. She was suddenly struck by the feeling that she was seeing something she shouldn't, that she was a spy, up to no good. Two military aircraft stood just inside the gate. She thought one of them was a Draken.

The road wound its way along the fence, and she leaned forward to see through the windscreen better. She slowly pa.s.sed the conscripts' car park and reached an enormous shooting range. Ten men in green camouflage, with pine-twigs on their helmets, were running across the range, automatic weapons in their hands, the carbines bouncing against the recruits' chests. A signpost indicated that the road continued towards Lulnasudden, but a no-entry sign some hundred metres further on made her stop and turn the car round. The green men were no longer visible.

She stopped by the security block, hesitating for a moment before switching off the engine and getting out of the car. She walked alongside the plain-panelled building with its reflective windows, unable to see any doors, people, or even a bell. Just herself. Suddenly a loudspeaker somewhere up to her left addressed her.

'What do you want?'

Taken aback, she looked up to where the voice had come from, saw nothing but panelling and chrome.

'I'm here to see, um, Pettersson,' she said to her reflection. 'The Press Officer.'

'Captain Pettersson, just a moment,' said the voice, that of a young conscript.

She turned her back on the building and looked through the gates. The trees carried on inside, but between the trunks she could make out grey-green hangars and rows of military vehicles. It was hard to estimate how large the base was from the outside.

'Go through the gate and into the first door on the right,' the disembodied voice said.

Annika did as she was told, like a good citizen and spy.

The officer who met her was the archetype of the successful military man, stiff-backed, grey-haired and in good shape.

'I'm Annika Bengtzon,' she said, holding out her hand. 'We spoke on the phone last week. The anniversary of the attack . . .'

The man held her hand for a second too long. She evaded his open gaze and friendly smile.

'As I said on the phone, there isn't much we can say that hasn't been made public before. What we can provide are summaries of the situation as it was then, the conclusions we have previously presented, and a tour of the museum. Gustaf, who's in charge of that, is off sick today, I'm afraid, but he'll probably be up on his feet again tomorrow, if you want to come back.'

'There's no chance of taking a look at the site of the attack?'

His smile grew even broader. 'I thought we cleared that up on the phone. We've never made that public.'

She smiled back tentatively. 'Did you see the article by Benny Ekland in the Norrland News Norrland News last week?' last week?'

The officer invited her to sit down at a table. She took off her coat and fished her notebook out of her bag.

'I've got a copy of the text here, if you'd like to-'

'I know the article you mean,' he said, looking up at the conscript who had entered the room holding a clipboard. 'If you could just sign the register?'

Annika signed herself in as a visitor to the base with an illegible scrawl.

'Is there any truth in it?' she asked, declining the offer of coffee.

The press officer poured a huge cup for himself, in a Bruce Springsteen mug.

'Not much,' he said, and Annika's heart sank.

'There were quite a few details that were new,' she said, 'at least for me. Could we go through the text, statement by statement, so that I can get an idea of which bits are accurate?'

She pulled the copy of the article out of her bag.

Captain Pettersson blew on his coffee and took a cautious sip.

'The Lansen was gradually replaced by the J35 Draken in the late sixties,' he said. 'That much is true. The surveillance version came in sixty-seven, the fighter in the summer of sixty-nine.'

Annika was reading the article closely.

'Is it true that there were sabotage attempts on the planes, with matches being stuck into various tubes?'

'Left-wing groups ran around in here a fair bit back then,' the press officer said. 'The fence around the base is mostly symbolic; it's fairly easy for anyone who really wants to to get over or through it. The match boys presumably thought they could damage the planes by inserting matches in the pitot tubes, but I have no evidence that they were in any way responsible for the attack in sixty-nine.'

Annika was taking notes.

'And the leftover fuel? Is the information about buckets being used to collect it accurate?'

'Well, yes,' Pettersson said, 'I suppose it is, but you can't set light to aviation fuel with a match. It's far too low octane. To set light to it, it has to be seriously warmed up, so that's incorrect. At least, that wouldn't work in Lulea in November.'

He smiled nonchalantly.

'But there had been a big exercise that evening? And all the planes were outside?'

'It was a Tuesday night,' the officer said. 'We always fly on Tuesdays; all the bases in the country do, and have done for decades. Three sorties, the last one landing at twenty-two hundred hours. After that the planes stand on the tarmac for an hour or so before they're towed into the hangars. The attack took place at one thirty-five, so by then they were all indoors.'

Annika swallowed, lowering the article to her lap.

'I thought we might finally be getting to the bottom of this whole business,' she said, trying to smile at the press officer.

He smiled back with intense blue eyes, and she leaned forward.

'It's more than thirty years ago, now, though. Can't you at least say what caused the explosion?'

Silence spread, but she had nothing against that: the pressure was on him, not her. Unfortunately Captain Pettersson seemed completely unconcerned that she had travelled a thousand kilometres for nothing. She was obliged to drop the subject.

'Why did you come to the conclusion that the Russians were behind it?'

'A process of elimination,' he said, leaning back in his chair and tapping his pen against the mug. 'The local groups were soon written off, and the security police know that there were no external activists here at the time, neither right nor left wing.'

'How can you be so sure?'

For the first time the officer was completely serious, his pen silent.

'Local groups were put under immense pressure after the attack. A whole lot of information came out: we know, for instance, exactly who was running around with those matches, but no one said a word about the attack. We concluded that no one knew anything. If they had, we would have found out.'

'Did you or the police conduct the interviews?'

He was smiling faintly again.

'Let's just say that we helped each other.'

Annika turned the facts over in her mind, staring at her notes without seeing them.

'But,' she said, 'the degree of silence in any group is dependent on how fundamentalist they are, isn't it? How can you be sure that there wasn't a cast-iron core of fully-fledged terrorists that you never caught sight of, because they simply didn't want to be seen?'

The man was silent for slightly too long, then he laughed. 'Where?' he said, standing up. 'Here in Lulea? In the middle of nowhere? It was the Russians, it must have been.'

'So why content themselves with one Draken?' Annika asked, gathering her things. 'Why not blow up the whole base?'

Captain Pettersson shook his head and sighed. 'To show us that they could, probably; to knock us off balance. We all wish we had the ability to see into their minds, to understand their reasoning. Why did they send Polish art dealers to visit all our officers? Why beach that submarine, U137, on the rocks outside Karlskrona? I'm sorry, but I have to give a presentation in a few minutes.'

Annika zipped up her bag and stood up, pulling on her coat.

'Well, thank you,' she said. 'And thanks for the offer of the museum tour, but I'm not sure I'll have time tomorrow. I've still got a few things to do and I'm flying home after lunch.'

'Try to find the time,' the press officer said, shaking her hand. 'Gustaf's got it in pretty good shape.'