XVI

I watched as Sasha and several men marched across the field towards the barn, dragging Sarah along with them. Having run far enough into the trees to be out of their line of sight, I’d picked up a piece of brush and swept away the tracks behind me. I hadn’t spent as much time on it as I would usually have done, though, because everything I did now had to be a compromise. I had to take precautions if I wanted to stay alive, and if I wanted to get Sarah back. But the longer I took, the less likely it was that I would be able to reach the U-boat.

Once I was confident that I’d gone far enough in, I headed towards a ridge that overlooked the far corner of the field, and climbed onto the lower branches of a large pine. It was called the Fish Hook, a simple if unexpected manoeuvre, and it meant I could observe my hunters and get an idea of their strength and what equipment they’d brought with them.

Apart from Sarah, I could make out two others in the field: Sasha and another man. Both of them looked heavily armed, but Sasha’s companion was also carrying a case, which even in the moonlight I recognized as being the type they had used in the war to carry long-range transceivers. Presumably the rest of the company had been dispersed to look for me.

Sasha knocked on the door of the cottage, and after a few seconds a man opened it. I couldn’t see his face, but no doubt he was alarmed at the sight of Russian soldiers with a female prisoner. Sasha gestured with his arms, pointing back towards the helicopter. Perhaps the bastard was claiming that Sarah was an injured member of his party. The door opened more widely, and Sasha, his companion and Sarah stepped into the cottage.

I lowered myself from the branches and glanced through the thicket of trees at the small bay: I could make out the ripple of water under the sky, and some bulky shapes dotted in the trees: more cottages, or perhaps boathouses? It was so quiet one could hardly imagine that there were Soviet operatives hunting me out there, but Sasha would have sent a few and they would be searching for my tracks with torches.

It was equally hard to imagine that this place might soon be contaminated by fallout, but that too was real. The Soviets would want to stop me from reaching the West as a matter of course, but I had now made it across the border and they were still chasing me – and they were shooting to kill. The fact that Sasha was here confirmed that the situation hadn’t changed since I’d left Moscow this morning. The fools thought I was trying to reach someone in authority in the West so I could warn them they were about to be attacked. Brezhnev had held his hand so far, but it looked like he was still poised to launch a strike against the West, and wanted to make sure that if he did he kept it a surprise.

It was also interesting that it had been Sasha in the helicopter, not Yuri. That suggested that he was the Proshin who had called Raaitikainen, not Yuri. So he was Yuri’s son – why hadn’t I realized it before? Well, they didn’t look much alike. It made perfect sense, though. Yuri had been my first handler, and Sasha had been my last. It also explained why Sasha had been so surly towards me in Moscow: he had joined the GRU to follow in his old man’s footsteps and had risen through the ranks, but had been taken off proper work by his father to deal with me, and he resented it. I knew the feeling.

It also seemed that Sasha had been given the task of finding and eliminating me, as well as a hunter-killer unit with which to do it. I’d been part of a similar group once, but that was twenty-four years ago. These men were half my age, in peak physical condition and no doubt hungry for my blood on account of Bessmertny and whatever else they’d been told I’d done. Once they had found and killed me, Sasha would signal back to Moscow and Brezhnev would launch his strike on the West – provided he was prepared to wait even that long. There was always the possibility that Sasha would signal that they were still hunting me, and he felt the time was optimal.

I was alive for the time being, but what was my best course of action now? I was on an island in the middle of the Baltic, but I had no idea which one. It might not even be anywhere near Söderviken. I was soaked to the skin, my face was smeared with blood and faeces, and I was in the danger zone for hypothermia. The tremors hadn’t returned, thankfully, but my heart rate had dramatically increased after we’d crashed into the water and my entire body had tensed up, so it was taking time for it to calm down again.

I hugged myself for warmth, and wondered if I should remove my clothes. They had stuck to my skin, and my shoes were starting to break apart. In 1945, I’d brought plastic bags to place over my socks, and then another pair of socks to place over the bags, in case I had been stranded and had needed to stop the onset of frostbite. There wasn’t much chance of that happening now, but it was still below freezing: icicles were hanging from the lower fronds of the tree. I was losing heat because my clothes were wet, and my training dictated that I remove them and make a fire to dry them. But I didn’t have time to do that, and being naked even for a short while in this environment would probably worsen my state. I might also need to approach one of the locals, and a man in wet clothes with shit all over his face would still be more welcome than a naked one. I decided to keep my clothes on for the time being.

My only advantage against Sasha and his men was that I was alone. Although that thought wasn’t exactly comforting, because they had Sarah, it also meant that I could move much more easily than they could. There were thousands of islands here, and thousands of trees, outhouses and barns dotted among them: they couldn’t begin to search them all. I also had a slim psychological advantage: the Russians had massively outnumbered the Finns in 1940, and had had a rude awakening. They would be keenly aware of this, and if any of them had fathers who had died in the war a part of them would be afraid to be in Finland. Angry and determined to find me, yes – but also a little afraid.

It was also an advantage that Sasha was here, and that he had brought that transceiver. If I could reach the canisters, get them out of the water and show them to him, I might still have a chance. If I could prove that the injuries at the bases were part of an accidental leak, he could then transmit a message to that effect back to Moscow. If he did, it would hold a lot more sway than if it came from an official in the Soviet consulate in Åland, which had been my plan to date.

But the new plan meant I would have to let them hunt me. I’d have to keep them just close enough that they would be on hand when I reached the mustard gas. But not so close that they could kill me before then. It was a tall order, but it was all I could think of. My first task was to find a diving suit.

I sat in the tree watching, and then Sasha and the other man came out of the barn and began walking towards the north-eastern edge of the field, where there was a dirt road. I waited a few more minutes for them to make their way down the path, then slowly lowered myself out of the branches.

As I picked up a piece of brush, I registered movement in my peripheral vision, but before I could turn I was pushed back by the force of a kick to my chest and lost my balance. I thudded into the trunk of the tree, and as I tried to regain my breath, I caught sight of my assailant: his face was streaked with mud and he was raising a gun at me. He brought his forearm down in a scything motion and I leapt to my right. As I did, I caught one of the branches with my hand and it sprang back and scratched the Russian’s face. He cursed, and tried to aim again, so I dived for his feet and brought him down. He landed on the back of his head, his gun falling from his hand. I leaned over and punched him in the jaw, but my chest was tight with pain and the swing was slow as a result – it hardly made any impact. He kicked out again and his boot caught me in the shoulder. He started scrabbling towards his gun, which lay a few inches away from him on the ground. I knew he was going to make it, and turn and shoot me through the eyes. Desperate, I raised my arms for the branch above me and caught hold of something cold and wet. An icicle. I snapped it off and brought it down as hard as I could, and the point penetrated his throat before he had a chance to scream.

I retrieved the pistol, another Makarov, and placed it next to me. I started to strip off his trousers, which were nice and dry, but then a loud squelching sound burst from him and I froze. It was coming from beneath his jacket, which I removed to reveal a vest with several large pouches. Grenade, signal flare, knife, rations – and a small receiver.

The static cut off, and a voice broke through.

‘Medov, Zelenin, this is Rook – any sign of the target?’

It was Sasha.

There was another burst of static, and then a new voice: ‘This is Medov. No sign of him here.’

Static, then Sasha came on again.

‘Zelenin, how about you?’

I stared down at Zelenin’s chest, panic sweeping through me. I couldn’t reply – Sasha would recognize my voice at once. Even if I tried to disguise it, he would still know I wasn’t Zelenin. But if I didn’t answer, he would reason that I might have killed Zelenin and send men back this way to find me.

There was no time to waste. I put the pistol and transmitter in my pockets, then stumbled through the trees, my chest aching from the high kick, my body numb with cold. Fifteen agonizing minutes later I found a small cottage in a clearing, and I climbed the steps to the door and hammered on it. A woman opened it halfway, and peered out. She was old, with matted grey hair, and wore a faded blue dress and a white shawl. I pushed past her and staggered into the hallway, my eyes adjusting to the light and taking in the simple pine furniture, a fireplace, a kettle on a stove.

‘I need your help,’ I said in Swedish, my breathing coming hard. ‘Please . . . Please call Degerby police station and ask for Constable Lundström.’

I took in her look of fear and astonishment, and then my legs buckled and I fell to the floor.

*

Someone was shaking me by the shoulder, and I opened my eyes. Looking up, I recognized the old woman, and asked her how long I had been out.

‘Not long,’ she said. ‘Perhaps half an hour.’

I was still on the floor, and I rose to my feet. My chest felt constricted and I was aching all over, but my head was clear. Half an hour was a hell of a long time.

‘The Russians. Have you seen any?’

She shook her head, and I realized she was frightened. I had a gun on my hip.

‘I don’t mean you any harm,’ I said, and very slowly removed the pistol and placed it on a sideboard covered in lace, next to an antique clock. Her shoulders relaxed a little.

‘Did you call Lundström in Degerby?’ I asked.

She nodded. ‘He said he would come at once – but Degerby is quite far away. I think you should clean up and get out of those clothes. I have some for you if you would like them.’

She led me to a small but spotless bathroom, where she had laid out a shirt, a pair of narrow twill trousers and calf-high boots. There was also a basin, which she had filled with water, and beside it a towel. I thanked her, and she bowed her head and closed the door.

I removed my shirt and dipped my head in the basin, rubbing off all the shit – no wonder she had looked frightened of me. There was a glass by the tap, and I poured water into it and gulped it down, then poured some more and gulped that too.

Sarah had been captured.

I removed the rest of my clothes and climbed into the ones the old woman had left for me. They were a reasonable fit, and they were dry. I would have liked to have washed properly and treated some of my aches and pains, but there was no time for that.

Sasha and his men would now be searching every inch of this area for me, and could get here before Lundström. As if to emphasize this point, there was a burst of noise from the pile of clothes on the floor, and I reached into the trouser pocket and took out the radio receiver.

‘Medov to Rook. Current location Map C, J11. Boathouse empty.’

‘Rook to Medov. Any sign of disturbance?’

‘None, Rook. There are several cottages along this section – I will move on to them now.’

‘Understood. Report back in ten minutes. We have three hours to find him.’

The device went silent.

Three hours to find me.

I had imagined I’d seen a nuclear attack when I’d been captured at the border, but part of me had refused to believe it was possible, despite hearing Brezhnev order the missiles primed myself. Sasha’s presence here in Finland confirmed that the Russians wanted to stop me from warning anyone they were about to attack, but even that hadn’t quite convinced me. The message on the receiver had. There was only one reason I could think of for them needing to finding me within the next three hours: it must be the deadline they had been given by Moscow. If they hadn’t stopped me by then, Brezhnev was going to go ahead and launch a strike anyway. After that, it wouldn’t be long before R-hour.

I poured some more water and sipped at it, but I’d lost my thirst. I stared at the glass in my hand, at the meniscus of the water curving up to meet the sides of it. From this angle the surface was like a silvery-grey ridge, and gave the illusion of being a separate object from the water. I replaced the glass on the basin, suddenly transfixed by the surface of the water. In my mind’s eye, it was as though the water was the world, and the air above it what would happen to it after a nuclear attack. Those two separate realities were only held apart by that thin silvery line between them: me.

Focus, Paul.

I picked up the transmitter and returned to the living room, where the woman was placing logs on the fire.

‘Thank you for the clothes,’ I said. ‘They’re a good fit.’

She turned to look at me.

‘They belonged to my husband,’ she said, her eyes cavernous. ‘He died last spring.’

Jesus. What had I walked into here?

There was a banging noise. The door. We both froze. I reached for the Makarov on the sideboard, and she shuffled to the door and unlocked it. A man in a police uniform, clutching a Lahti pistol, stepped into the room, his face weather-beaten and shaven, but nevertheless familiar.

‘Kjell Lundström?’ I said.

He lowered the pistol and furrowed his brow.

‘No, I’m his son, Jan.’

He was slimmer than his father, but otherwise had come to resemble him in the intervening years.

‘Thank God!’ I said. ‘I need to find a diving suit at once. Can you help?’

He stared at me for a few moments and then a look of recognition crossed his face.

‘You are the British lieutenant-colonel who came here in 1945.’

‘Yes!’ I said, surprised that he’d even remembered my rank. ‘But I’m afraid there’s no time for catching up. I desperately need to find a diving suit – there’s a German U-boat on the seabed a few miles south of Söderviken, and I need to get to it – fast.’

I led him into the hallway and quickly told him the story. His eyes widened, but he nodded his head rapidly. ‘You’re in luck,’ he said. ‘I know where the coastguards keep all their equipment, and I believe they have a few diving suits there.’

‘Great. How do we get there?’

He stretched out a hand, and gave a slightly crooked smile.

‘Come with me.’

*

We bid goodbye to the woman, and left her in her cottage in the woods, perhaps wondering if the world was about to end. I brought along the Makarov and the radio receiver. Lundström had a small speedboat tied up by the jetty, and as we walked down to it I asked him how his father was doing. His mouth tightened fractionally, and he told me he had died some years previously.

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know him, but he seemed like a good man.’

Lundström nodded, his eyes focused straight ahead. ‘He was,’ he said quietly.

We climbed aboard. He took the wheel and I seated myself on a low bench, taking in the smells of diesel and grease. The water was wreathed in a low mist, the surface stippled with flecks of moonlight. The helicopter had crashed in a cluster of islands called Kumlinge, and now we were heading for an island called Storklubb, or Klobbo in local dialect. Lundström handed me a torch and I shone it ahead of us to light the way. As we left the bay through bobbing buoys, small islets started to hove into view, but Lundström didn’t slow for them and we passed through smoothly. I noticed a small pile of greyish-white stones had been arranged on the tip of one of the islets, contrasting against the pink granite beneath, and guessed he was also using them to navigate.

He had explained that the coastguards had several stations on the island, but that this one had diving equipment stored in a cabin away from the barracks building, and that he was confident we could creep in. He knew where they kept the key. ‘There are few secrets in this place,’ he said. ‘Especially if you’re in law enforcement.’

We were going at about fifteen knots, I thought, and every few seconds we crested a wave and cold spray hit my face and froze my jaw.

‘There should be some clothes under there,’ he shouted over the noise of the motor, pointing to a line of low cupboards under the seating. ‘I’d advise you to put on some more layers, because it will be even colder when we get out there.’

I bent down and slid one of the cupboards open and found an old rollneck sweater, which I pulled over my head, and a pair of canvas trousers, which I placed over the dead husband’s. Lundström looked like a gun dog focused on a bird: with this man’s help, I might be able to make it. I just had to hope that Sarah was still in one piece. I tried to focus on the task ahead. Once I got hold of the diving suit, I would have to try to locate the U-boat and dive for the canisters. But then I would have to get them out of the water, and find Sasha again . . .

I let my thoughts spin away as the smell of pines and seaweed carried on the air. We crested a large wave and spray covered the windscreen, obscuring the view for a second. Lundström had gone quiet, his face set. He took a large map from the dashboard and consulted it. Then he cut the motor.

‘We’ll be coming in soon,’ he said.

He steered with a more intense concentration until, about five minutes later, we came to a pass between two small islands. Lundström slowed the boat and headed towards the one on the left. He climbed out and swiftly jumped onto the shore, tying the ropes to a metal ring attached to the remains of a small wooden quay, one half of which had fallen apart.

‘Ryssbryggan,’ he said, as I joined him on shore and tied the other rope. ‘We used to be part of the Russian Empire, you know. They built this back in the First World War.’ He finished tying up and looked across at me. ‘I hate the fucking Russians,’ he added. His jaw clenched for a moment, and then slackened again.

The jetty led onto a narrow dirt track through dense bushes and foliage, and we swiftly made our way along it, taking care to keep our heads down. ‘That’s their barracks,’ Lundström whispered after a couple of minutes, pointing to a greyish-white building in a clearing ahead. ‘But they keep the diving equipment in there.’ He pointed to a tiny cabin with white window frames positioned a few dozen feet away from the main building, right on the water.

We ducked down and started crawling through a brush of long grass. Now I saw that there was a jetty here as well, but that it was occupied by several patrol boats – Sea-Hounds or something similar – which was presumably why we’d come via the broken quay instead.

Crack.

I sat, frozen still in the grass. It was just some twigs breaking under my feet, but had anyone inside the barracks heard the noise? The outline of Lundström’s head was just visible against the deep blue of the sky a few feet ahead of me, and he was utterly still. The wind rustled near us, the water lapped softly against the side of the jetty, but there were no other sounds. Finally, Lundström ducked his head; he raised the palm of his hand and gestured for me to come forward.

Less than twenty seconds later we were at the edge of the cabin. Lundström crawled onto a small step leading to the door and I saw him feeling around with his hands until he lifted a key from a ledge beneath the step. Then he pawed his way up until he was in the doorway and stood. He beckoned me to join him again and I did. He looked at me for a moment, then inserted the key. He turned it. The click sounded terribly loud in the silence, and we waited to see if anything responded. When nothing did, he slowly eased the door open, and we stepped inside.

It was even darker than it had been outside, but after a few seconds my eyes began to adjust. We were in a small hallway with two wooden doors, similar to the one we had just come through. Lundström reached for the handle of the door to the right, then leaned his shoulder into it and opened it. I followed him into a room that felt a little larger than the hallway, but which was yet darker.

‘In here,’ Lundström whispered from the far corner, and I walked towards the sound of his voice. I heard him unhook a latch and he told me to go in ahead of him, which I did, but at the last moment something registered – heat – and I tried to pull back, but it was too late because I felt a rough shove at the base of my neck and I stumbled and fell to the floor. I heard the door slam shut and the latch hooking into place. It was lighter here, but incredibly hot, and I looked around the room with growing fear.

This wasn’t a storage room for diving equipment. It was a sauna.

*

‘Jan!’ I shouted out, but there was no response. Understanding swept over me. Lundström had lured me here so he could lock me in. And he had left me here to burn to death.

The heat was unbelievably intense, and my clothes were already soaked in sweat. I tore at them frantically, struggling with the boots and then kicking them off. I grabbed the gun from my pocket, but realized at once that it was too light: he’d emptied it – presumably when I’d been putting on more clothes at his suggestion.

I looked around again and began to make out a few more items in the room. There was a rectangular window low in the wall on the right and through it I glimpsed reeds and rushes and a stretch of water. Most of the room was taken up with two benches in the shape of steps to sit on, and below them was a basket filled with small wooden logs, presumably firewood for the stove. Some metal crowbars rested against the wall – perhaps to open the window? I reached for them, but they burned my hands, so I went for the wood instead. Slightly cooler. I threw one of the logs at the window, but it just bounced back at me comically. I could hardly see straight now, because sweat was pouring into my eyes, making them sting. I wanted to wipe them but my hands were also soaked and I thought I’d probably just make them worse.

As I was trying to think what to do next, a loud hissing sound made me jump. After a couple of seconds I realized what it was, as my chest started to burn up as though someone had lit a blowtorch inside me. Lundström hadn’t left; he had just poured water on the stove. Somewhere behind the pain I registered that this offered me some kind of leverage, but I struggled to grip the thought for long enough to follow it through, because the pain was so searing. I wanted to scream in agony, but if I did that I might bring the coastguards running, and with them ruin any chances I might have of stopping Brezhnev from going ahead with his strike. I grunted and groaned instead, biting my upper lip and tasting the hot sweat pouring off me. I crouched as close to the ground as I could but resisted the urge to lie down because I wasn’t sure if I did that I’d have the strength to get back up.

And then the hissing came again. The thought came into my mind that I was experiencing pure fear. In London during the war, the V2s had panicked everyone because the sound of their falling had been heard only after they had done their damage. But this was how terror really worked: the sound came first, then a delay, and finally the inevitable. And here it came: the heat rising again, so fast I felt my skin was going to burn off and my internal organs catch fire.

I wanted to detach my mind so I wasn’t as aware of the pain, but I knew it was crucial to hold on to my thoughts if I wanted to survive. A lucid thought broke in now: he must be opening the door to add water, and judging by the speed with which he was doing it the stove was probably very near the door. If I could muster the strength to reach it, perhaps I could get out, or at least stop him from pouring on any more water. I crawled in the direction of the heat, but it was agonizing and my skin started to sting as though it were about to bleed or peel off, and I recoiled instinctively. I had to fight my instincts, but it was getting harder to think straight.

‘You murdered my father,’ said a voice, startling me. It was Lundström, and the gentle tone he’d used before was now choked with rage. He hadn’t left me here, but was standing outside the door making sure I couldn’t escape. I turned to find the precise location of his voice – he was talking to me through the crack in the door.

‘Jan!’ I said. ‘Please, for the love of God let me out of here so we can talk about this. I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I can assure you I had nothing to do with your father’s death—’

‘You had everything to do with it!’ He laughed bitterly. ‘You have no idea how many times I thought of trying to find you. Once I even planned a trip to England, but I soon realized it was useless. I knew so little about you. But now here you are; you’ve fallen into my lap. It must be fate.’

I tried to move nearer to the door again, but the waves of heat were still too strong.

‘For Christ’s sake!’ I said. ‘Please open this fucking door before we all die!’

He laughed again. ‘You think I believed your crazy story about the world being on the brink of a nuclear war? No. You are on a mission, naturally, but that is surely not what it’s about. You claim to be the great hero who has come to rescue us all but I know who you really are, and what you’re doing. You are using me, just as you used my father. But I will not make the same mistake he did, which was to believe you.’

Had he gone mad? He sounded it. He threw more water onto the stove and the heat came again, spreading through me even more rapidly. My eyes felt like they were bulging from my head, and that they might disconnect. I wondered how much more of this I could take, and whether or not I could find a way to end it. Just slip to the ground. Yes, how easy that would be. The world can hang. We’ll all be dead anyway . . .

No, think, think. There must be some way out of here. Get to the door – he is pouring water on the stove through a gap in the door.

‘The Russians came to see us the morning after you left,’ he said. ‘Pappa stonewalled them, and said he had never heard of any British agents visiting. But he was not a good liar, or they had other evidence. They went away but returned shortly after, with a very cruel man in charge – I think he had come from Moscow. He didn’t believe Pappa’s story, and so he had come out himself to question him. He brought several other men with him, and some . . . equipment. They took Pappa to a basement in their headquarters in Mariehamn and tortured him for three days. When that didn’t work, they locked him inside a sauna much like this one and tried to boil him alive. By the end of it, he had told them everything – about you, the U-boat captain and the other agent. Now you are here, and I am going to make you suffer as they made Pappa suffer. I have a sauna nearly every day, and I know very well just how to make it hurt you: how much water to pour on, how long to wait. You’ll see.’

I believed him.

‘The man from Moscow,’ I said, struggling to breathe. ‘What was his name?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘Can you describe him?’

There was no answer.

‘Please, Jan, I promise you I had no intention of any of that happening. But this is important. Do you remember what he looked like?’

‘He was evil, that is all I can say. He looked like a . . . like a little boy, or a troll. He was pure evil.’

I fell back onto the bench.

Yuri.

Yuri had been here in 1945 – before he had recruited me in Germany.

I heard the hiss and knew what I had to do. I had about a second before the heat would hit me again. I leapt towards the door and slammed my shoulder into it, breaking it open. I lunged forward and grabbed Lundström by the collar as he stumbled backwards, his arms flailing. I brought my right hand down hard onto his wrist and gripped it, then swivelled into a half-turn and swung my other hand around to grab the barrel of the Lahti from below, jerking it back until it was parallel with the ground. He let out a scream as his trigger finger snapped, and the pistol dropped into my hand.

It was a heavy pistol. It reminded me of Father’s Luger. I trained it on him.

‘I’m sorry about your father,’ I said. ‘But there are more important things at the moment. Make another sound and I’ll blow your head off. Understand?’

He nodded, his eyes darting wildly. He was still clutching a ladle in one hand and I took it from him and dropped it in a bucket of water on the floor. The steam was still blasting in the sauna behind me, and a thought came to me. ‘How did you know it would be on?’ I said. ‘The sauna.’

‘I know the coastguards. They have saunas every Monday night and it’s someone’s job to prepare it. So I knew it would already be hot.’

‘What time do they have their sauna?’

‘Midnight.’

I checked the watch on his wrist.

‘That’s in fifteen minutes. You meant to kill me before then? What if I hadn’t died that fast and they had interrupted?’

He gave a cruel smile. ‘They would understand. Half the people on this island know who you are, and what you did to my father.’

Enough. There was no time for this. I pressed the pistol against the back of his neck.

‘Where can I find diving equipment?’

I had a couple of questions, but this was the most important one. I had to get to those canisters. But he didn’t answer, and just glared at me.

‘I don’t know.’

I swivelled him round so he was facing me.

‘Give me your best guess. You told me yourself there are few secrets here.’

He didn’t respond, just jutted out his chin and glared. Generals in Moscow were debating launching a nuclear strike, and this man might be my only chance of stopping it.

‘Tell me where I can find diving equipment or I’ll shoot.’

Nothing – only a clench of his jaw, his eyes wild with fury. I couldn’t get to the U-boat without a diving suit. If he knew enough to know the timetables of the coastguards’ saunas, there had to be a good chance he would know where to find a suit. But he was stubborn. Perhaps he wanted me to kill him. Perhaps he was so mad he’d forgotten what fear was. No – he’d known how to scare me well enough. It gave me an idea. I grabbed him by the neck until he was standing, then motioned to the door of the sauna with the pistol.

‘Get in,’ I said.

He shook his head.

‘Get in now!’

He opened the door and I pushed him into the space I’d been in just a few minutes earlier. A blast of heat hit me as I stepped in after him, and my skin prickled at the memory of the pain. Lundström had already started sweating. I grabbed one of his hands and placed the palm above the burning coals of the stove.

‘Where can I find diving equipment?’

I thought I saw fear growing in his eyes then, but he didn’t answer.

I slammed his hand down onto the coals, and he shrieked out. I removed it immediately – it had only been on for a fraction of a second. But it was enough.

‘Next door,’ he gasped, and pointed to the room adjacent.

I locked the sauna door then ran through and turned the light on. It was a dressing room: there was a line of towels and a poster illustrating the health benefits of the sauna. And laid out all along the benches and on the floor was diving equipment: suits, masks and air tanks. I found the suit that looked the newest, then picked up a mask and an attached hose and air tank, the mark Aga Divator.

Carrying my bounty over my arm, I returned to Lundström, who was whimpering and weeping with the pain.

‘I’m sorry about your father,’ I said. ‘I never meant for that to happen. But I never said I was a hero.’

I locked the door behind me, then walked down the steps and headed through the bushes, back towards the jetty.