At first I didn’t even look behind me. I just kept walking away from the hotel, along the wide street that curved around the water in front of the spectacular old buildings that seemed to be guarding modern downtown Stockholm. But I knew she was following me. I could feel it. And when I got to a square (well, really more of a round) with a statue of some guy, probably a king, on a horse, I glanced back and saw her advancing behind me like she was James Bond or someone, keeping an eye on me. Maybe I should have picked up my pace and lost her at that point, but something inside me didn’t want to—she was my only lifeline now.
I had some idea where I was going, since Grandpa and I had gone this way in the early afternoon when we were looking for gifts and souvenirs in the trendy shopping area not far from here. So I turned up one of those streets, a kind of walking promenade, though it was wide enough for cars, with gray blocks for the road surface. There were lots of people around, which was a relief to me. Even though it was nearly ten o’clock, quite a few of the little stores were open as well as all of the restaurants and pubs, and there was still lots of noise spilling out onto the street. People went casually past on bicycles. I couldn’t believe how many bikes there were in Sweden—they were everywhere. I pulled up against a wall between two cafés and looked back. I couldn’t see Greta in the crowd behind me now, though that didn’t mean she wasn’t there. I walked on, feeling like I was being followed—not necessarily by Greta, just by someone, by something—but every time I turned around, there didn’t appear to be anyone in pursuit.
I was getting awfully hungry, but I didn’t want to buy anything, didn’t want to have to speak to anyone, make myself visible and draw attention to the filthy lost boy whom they might report to the police. I knew that was crazy, but it was what I was thinking. I passed several policemen, several of whom seemed to be eyeing me, but I didn’t look at them and kept moving on. Now, I had no idea where I was going. I just knew that I had to be gone for a while—I didn’t want to go running like a baby back to the hotel and find Greta there, Muscles herself, laughing at me.
I walked farther north along the promenade than Grandpa and I had and came to a busier street, four lanes wide and lined with big modern buildings, some of which looked like huge department stores, others like banks. There was another square, or round (they seemed to like their squares round in Sweden). This one had a weird fountain in the center with white circles in the water and a statue, or a sort of statue (it was more like a tall jagged piece of skinny rock, like a work of art—Swedes were into art), towering in the middle. I walked past it, noticing the names of the streets nearby, which in Stockholm are on white rectangles fastened to the sides of buildings.
Sveavägen.
This was the street the cab driver had taken us along when Grandpa and I had come through the center of Stockholm on our way from the airport to the hotel. At least it was familiar and I could return on it whenever I wanted and get back to the Grand. I turned up it.
It hadn’t seemed this wide and intimidating when we’d been on it just a few days ago. When I stared up from the sidewalk I could see that the buildings here were really tall—fancy, modern apartment buildings and other offices with stores at street level, all of them now closed.
There weren’t as many people here. In fact, once I was a fair piece along the street it was almost deserted, just the odd person passing me as I headed away from the safety of the hotel and Greta. But I couldn’t turn around, not yet.
The sensation that someone was following me dogged me, but every time I turned around there was no one. In fact, often there was literally no one near me, not a soul on the street nearby.
It didn’t seem like a good idea to go farther, so I decided to turn around. But then I realized something. The place where Olof Palme, the Swedish prime minister, had been brutally murdered was just a block away.
I don’t know why, but something was drawing me there. I wanted to see it and maybe, if I could summon enough courage, actually stand on the very spot. I was imagining what happened that night—the bad guy approaching with his pistol in the darkness as the prime minister and his wife walked along the safe Stockholm street, history and drama about to unfold. I’m kind of interested in guns, though I know that in some ways I shouldn’t be. I don’t think I’m intrigued in a bad way. It’s mostly because they are like little machines, really dynamic, firing objects at amazing speed through space. (The coolest gun is the one James Bond uses—can’t remember the name of it though.) By the time I neared the murder scene, it seemed like I was the only one on the street for miles around.
I knew where the location was from the reading I’d done and the fact that I’d seen what I thought was the exact spot when Grandpa and I drove in from the airport. But it was very different to see it on foot and all alone. I approached from the far side of the street and stood across from a subway entrance that went down into a building and then into the underground. There was a sign on the building, one of those white rectangular ones with black writing: Olof Palmes gata.
I decided to cross the road…go right up to the spot.
Even though I couldn’t see a single vehicle on the street, I looked both ways before I crossed at the light, moving cautiously over the black-and-white-striped pathway. There was a very narrow street right in front of me: Tunnelgatan. That was it—the alleyway down which the murderer had fled! He had escaped along that tiny artery into the bowels of Stockholm and forever away, like an elusive villain in a story! At least, that’s what was said. I approached cautiously and stood where I figured it must have happened, where the bullet had shot through the night. There was another subway entrance just to my right, a big blue-and-white letter T above me and something on the sidewalk to my left, at my feet: a bronze plaque. I stared down at it.
The words were in Swedish, but I recognized the name, Olof Palme, and the date, February 28, 1986, and it seemed to me that another word, mördades, probably had something to do with murder. My hands grew sweaty, and my heart rate picked up. I raised my head and stared down the narrow street. Its name sounded like a tunnel. Tunnelgatan. It looked like one too. It seemed to disappear into utter darkness.
I was really good at imagining things, bad things usually—Mom often said that. And right now I was imagining really awful things.
I should go home immediately, down Sveavägen to the Grand Hôtel, force them to let me in, find my grandfather and then go all the way home, back to America, to my mother and father. I didn’t care whether I was being sensitive or not. Maybe that’s what I was. Who cared? I just wanted to go home!
But then I saw a figure coming toward me out of the darkness. And it was running right at me. From where I stood, it appeared to be a man, quite large and dressed in black with short black hair and a mustache—the very likeness of the assassin who had been accused of murdering Palme but had never been convicted. The prime minister’s wife, who had been right beside him on that beautiful night as they walked home from a movie in perfect, nonviolent Stockholm and had seen him murdered in cold blood, had picked this person out of a lineup a few years after it happened!
I turned and fled down Sveavägen. But when I was just a few strides farther, I knew it wasn’t a good idea to try to run. This man’s legs were way longer than mine, and no one was nearby to help me. He would catch me instantly. I slipped into the doorway of the closest building and flattened myself against the wall, trying to calm my breathing, which seemed as loud as the wind in a storm. As I stood there, I wondered where Grandpa was at that very moment—how could he have lost me? What was he doing? What did he do all day at the meetings that he told me nothing about? I imagined how he would feel when they found my dead body lying on Sveavägen, right near the spot where the prime minister was murdered!
I heard the man emerge from the tunnel-like street. He paused for a second, breathing hard, probably looking both ways, searching for any sign of me. Then he started coming my way.