‘In an hour,’ was what Marita Leander said when Sara called her again.
‘No, now,’ said Sara. She had no desire to wait. Dorch hadn’t called back and it was becoming more and more urgent to find Rau.
But a short while later when Sara rang Leander’s doorbell, she didn’t open up and she wasn’t answering her mobile either.
Another one missing. Another who had wanted to postpone the meeting to buy time? Or who was merely hiding inside the flat? Perhaps she’d been planning to flee but hadn’t got away because Sara had arrived so quickly.
This wasn’t Sara’s case, and Leander wasn’t suspected of anything, so she couldn’t summon a locksmith to gain entry to the flat and she still had no intention of giving in. She went down to the car again, opened the boot and pulled out a crowbar. She was going inside.
On the way back to the door into the building she noticed a purple figure slowly ambling back and forth across the grass with her arms outstretched. After a couple of seconds, she recognised Leander. She was out taking her cats for a walk. On leads.
‘I said I needed an hour,’ said Leander. ‘You can’t stress Palle and Stina – if you do then they can’t do their business.’
‘But why aren’t you answering your mobile phone?’
‘It’s on silent. The cats don’t like mobile ringtones when they’re out. They get nervous. Isn’t that right?’ Leander’s last comment was addressed to the cats in a prattling baby voice.
‘You shouldn’t go out like this.’ Sara looked around. Leander was completely unprotected here. Sara realised that she was too.
‘I’m not afraid,’ said Leander.
‘You ought to be. And I can’t arrange police protection for you.’
Leander laughed.
‘Police protection? You think a former Red Army Faction member would agree to police protection?’
‘You really could do with it.’
‘Why do you have a crowbar?’ Leander said suddenly.
‘Would you look at that! So I do,’ said Sara. She had learned that when you had no good explanation to offer it was always better to offer nothing. ‘Dorch is missing,’ she said instead. ‘Why? Is he afraid or was he Faust?’
‘Don’t know. Dorch is his new identity – I’ve no idea whether it was Kremp’s or Rau’s. We weren’t supposed to know each other’s new names.’
Sara couldn’t fathom how they had managed to keep track of all the layers of made-up names and false identities. But the point had presumably been just that – it was hard to identify them.
‘What was it you were planning? What could be so secret that people have to die today – thirty years later?’
‘No idea.’
‘I can tell you’re lying.’
Leander stopped.
‘I can’t tell you. You have to accept that.’
‘Do you trust him? Rau? He’s killed two of you. Perhaps three. What makes you think that you’re not next in line?’
‘The fact that I’m not talking.’
‘How does he know that? He seems to know about my every move, and right now I’m talking to you. He’s presumably somewhere watching us right now.’
Sara looked around. Lots of tall buildings and countless windows and roofs. The Dagens Nyheter Tower, the Sweco building, the Russian embassy. The hill with Fyrverkarbacken on it. Faust could be just about anywhere without being seen.
‘And he doesn’t know what we’re talking about,’ said Sara. ‘And if I know him, the very suspicion that you’ve told me something will be enough for him to kill you. Are you prepared to take that risk?’
Leander didn’t reply. She kept her gaze glued to her cats.
‘Do you want to die too?’ said Sara.
More silence.
‘What was Operation Wahasha?’
Leander looked at Sara.
‘You know about that?’
‘Yes. I know it was something big. What was it?’
No answer.
‘Tell me. Or would you prefer me to arrest you? I can hold you for seventy-two hours. How would your cats cope with that?’
Sara was telling a barefaced lie. But it didn’t seem to be enough. Leander merely looked at her, unaffected.
‘I can make Rau believe that it was you who told me about Wahasha.’
An ice-cold bluff and highly dubious in moral terms. But it worked. Leander looked at Sara as if she wanted to be certain that she was serious about her threat. Once she had seemingly decided that she was, she cast quick, frightened glances around, and after a period of silence she said in a low voice:
‘ . . . the king.’
‘What about the king?’ Sara leaned towards the purple-clad figure.
‘The 1990 state visit. The Israeli president Chaim Herzog was scheduled to come to Sweden for a state visit. To see our king.’
‘And?’
‘Well, the king was a symbol of the oppressor state and Herzog of the war to exterminate the Palestinians. A former general who had fought in both the army and Haganah – that’s the terrorist group that became the army when Israel was founded.’
‘You were going to kill the king?’
Sara could barely believe her ears.
‘You have to understand – it was a different time. We were just responding to the violence. The bombing of civilians in Vietnam, the women and children massacred in refugee camps in Lebanon, the reckless violence directed by the police towards peaceful protestors here in Europe. Now they want us to join NATO, so that we have even less say. What do you think will happen to freedom of expression then? How do you think it’ll go for the Syrians, the Palestinians, the people in developing countries that are persecuted for the sake of oil? It’s still the same struggle today.’
‘The same struggle today? So you’re still prepared to kill the king?’ Sara said in astonishment.
‘Not me personally. But I would understand it if others wanted to, if it helped the struggle. The Palestinians are still in their camps. Imagine if you and your family had seen your home stolen and then you were banished to another country where no one wanted you. If your children and grandchildren had to grow up in tent camps. If they never had the chance of a dignified life. If no one did.’
‘How close did you come to realising Wahasha?’
Marita Leander stared across the waters of Mälaren before turning to Sara.
‘Is it still punishable? Can I be charged if I tell you?’
‘Definitely not. I just want to get to Rau. Tell me.’
Leander had to think a little longer before making her mind up. She looked around, looked at her cats and then finally at Sara. And then she lowered her voice again as she spoke.
‘We had spent months preparing. We’d reccied escape routes, suitable locations to attack the motorcade, had written a manifesto we were going to disseminate afterwards. We were going to strike in three places simultaneously – that was the idea. The motorcade with the king and Herzog; the American embassy; the police headquarters on Kungsholmen. It would be revenge for the failures during the embassy drama and Operation Leo. And for the decimation of East Germany. We wanted to show the fascists that they hadn’t been victorious in the slightest, that the battle was far from over.’
‘How were you planning to pull off an attack on the American embassy? Surely it was heavily armed even back then?’
‘Rau had got hold of some anti-tank grenade launchers. The Carl Gustaf ones that Sweden sold to various dictatorships and warmongers. We thought it was a form of poetic justice – turning those weapons on their makers. We planned to get close to the embassy by pretending to be two women with their prams out for a stroll around Gärdet. And once we were close enough, we would pull out a grenade launcher each from the prams and fire at the embassy. We knew where the ambassador’s office was, so we were going to aim for that.’
‘And you were one of the women?’
Leander paused for a long time before replying.
‘Yes.’
‘But you never executed Operation Wahasha?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’ Sara asked.
‘Don’t know. Perhaps because the Wall had fallen. It was very expensive to run an operation like this and after the Wall came down there was no more money coming in.’
‘So you gave it all up? Having worked towards it for months?’
‘Several years, actually.’
‘Several years?’
‘Yes. Our preparations were very thorough. We were waiting for the right target. And when we heard about Herzog it all fell into place,’ said Leander.
‘And Rau wouldn’t want this to come out?’
‘No. But above all, he was wanted in West Germany.’
‘Hasn’t the statute of limitations timed that out?’
‘He was wanted for murder. Multiple murders. Or that was how the police state described it anyway.’
‘And he might still think he’s killing for a good cause?’
‘The world hasn’t got better, has it?’ said Leander, raising an eyebrow. ‘There’s still a lot to do.’
‘Do you really believe that terror makes the world a better place?’
‘Terror is the oppressors’ name for what we did. If you’re surgically removing a cancerous tumour you also have to remove healthy tissue. That’s just how it is. No matter how unpleasant it may seem, you have to sacrifice a small part to save the whole. Strike one to educate one hundred, as the Red Brigades used to say.’
‘How did Stiller contact you when he wanted to blackmail you?’
‘By letter. Good old-fashioned snail mail. I suppose the intelligence agencies are focused on the digital world these days – no one cares about regular letters.’ Leander looked down at the cats, which were glowering with hatred at the leads fettering them to their mistress.
‘Can I see it?’
‘I burnt it after I had paid. Never leave any trace – it’s in my bones.’
‘What did he write in the letter?’
‘It was very formal – rather old-fashioned. Something like “Dear Marita, if you do not pay one hundred thousand kronor into the account below then your current name, your cover name of Lorelei and your true name of Marita Werner will be brought to the attention of the BND. They are most interested in your group following the recent removal of the spy ring around Geiger.” And then an account number at the bottom.’
Sara’s mobile buzzed and she pulled it out to see what it was. She didn’t want to miss anything work-related and irritate Bielke further.
But it wasn’t work. It was a text message from Ebba.