“Gentlemen, you can all come over here and sit down. I’m going to start in a little while,” Chris Loklinth called out. He had positioned himself in front of the blackboard in the S-Bar, as the inner circle called the room where their meetings had taken place during the Cold War. Then as much as now they dealt with things that could not be discussed in the light of day and at street level. What was planned in the S-Bar and then implemented in Sweden took place without any form of parliamentary scrutiny. That is how it was and how it should be, Loklinth thought.
The wings of history were beating the room.
At the start of his career, Undersecretary of State Olof Palme himself had sat in the S-Bar with the Prime Minister of the day, Tage Erlander. Here Palme met the young Catholic CIA officer William Colby and made plans for the defense of a new Europe. A Europe free from both communists and fascists, a cleansed Europe that could connect with the U.S. This move had been the embryo of the New World Order that was born in this very cellar, immediately underneath the Skandia insurance building.
Loklinth took a seat at the short end of the table and turned the page.
“I’m thinking of starting with a short recap, if there are no objections.”
Loklinth waited for assent before he continued. “You might be wondering why I have chosen the S-Bar as the venue for this particular meeting. Rather a lot of cycling required on your part. But entering the building from the street is far too risky. We don’t have the same control over the building as we used to. There are codes that could be passed on, surveillance cameras that could be reprogrammed, staff we never recruited. As you will understand, Skandia has new owners nowadays; the South African insurance company Old Mutual.”
Chris Loklinth cleared his throat, took a sip of water from the glass standing near him on the table.
“The choice of the S-Bar has psychological reasons. I want you to fully comprehend the severity of the situation. I know that times have changed. Palme’s murder is a thing of the past, yet it still has the capacity to wreak havoc in the corridors of power to this day.”
“We’re all going a bit senile, so I fear that a recap is necessary,” Anker Turner said. “Fill us in. What has you so riled up?”
“1986 was a historic year for Sweden, for better or worse. We lost one Prime Minister, Olof Palme, which, if you ask me, was inevitable. Things were getting completely out of hand at the time. I still don’t understand why you were so naïve. It was sheer luck that you got away with the cover-up. Until now. There are only two years left before the Palme murder will be taken off the statute books, and yet we are facing the biggest crisis we have ever encountered. In the next few days, everything we did to cover the tracks could collapse like a house of cards.”
He stared out across the room at the opposite whitish-gray concrete wall with an old-fashioned, round wall clock, the type to be found in subway stations of the past.
Damn, he thought. Someone should make an effort to renovate and refurbish down here. He loosened his tie, ran his finger round the inside of his collar, and felt the beating of his pulse.
“Couldn’t we let that guy, um…” Anders Glock said. “What was his name again?”
“Anton Modin,” Loklinth said curtly.
“Modin, that was it. Can’t we just tell him the truth? He would surely understand and put a lid on it. I can well imagine that he’s seen quite a bit in the Security Service archives.”
Glock was speaking slowly, in a deep warm voice.
“Under no circumstances,” Loklinth said. “The government has ordered us to take care of this mess internally. Modin would ruin our international diplomatic and financial contacts. We can’t trust him. He’s got to be neutralized. Quickly.”
“I thought that had already happened,” Anker Turner said in an ironic tone of voice.
Loklinth fell silent. He couldn’t stand the guy. Not only was he an old Social Democrat bigwig, but he was also fat and ugly and a flaming idiot.
“We tried, but Modin isn’t just anybody. I thought you already knew that, Turner.” He stressed the word “Turner,” giving it an arrogant ring.
“All I know is that someone didn’t do their job properly,” Turner shot back.
“Anton Modin is a former well-trained DSO operative. We created him. He knows how we work. And now that the Gustav V dock plan didn’t work, he is forewarned. We’ll have to get him some other way. Another accident would be too obvious. I’ll think something up, one way or another. You can be assured of that.”
He glared at Turner. He really hated him.
“So where do we go from here?” Stig Synnerman said in English.
Seems to have learned English well, Loklinth thought. No doubt because of all those meetings with MI6 guys here at Skandia House, one of several secret Stay Behind locations in Stockholm.
“We have to come up with a plan,” Glock said. “Will we be able to keep on using the Barbro Team? Doesn’t that present a risk?”
“The Barbro Team should be on standby from now on,” Loklinth said. “You can order them to the woods to hunt moose, or whatever it is they do, Mr. Glock.”
“Oh, that’ll be all right,” Glock said, twiddling the thumbs of his broad hands. “I’d rather stop Modin from digging any further. I know what I would have done in your shoes, Loklinth.” Glock looked at him with his intense gaze.
Loklinth felt as if he was staring down the barrel of a gun.
“You aren’t in my shoes,” Loklinth said raising his voice. “It’s 2009 now; this is no longer the good old times. It’s your damned Crack of Dawn veterans that fucked everything up. You should have kept a tighter rein on them. But you didn’t, and now I’m trying to come up with a plan B. You should have had one.”
“We did have a plan B.”
Loklinth didn’t see who had spoken.
“We should simply have Modin silenced, once and for all,” General Synnerman interrupted. The former Chief of Staff was emboldened by the beer. “People of his kind cause trouble. Believe me, I know. Send out a squad this evening. Squish the little rat.”
“Not one more word along those lines,” said Loklinth who felt his patience flying out into the network of tunnels. He pulled himself together and took the initiative once again. “We’ve all got to keep our mouths shut. Who has detailed information on the Palme murder?”
“If you leave out that intelligence buffoon, Professor G. W. Persson, very few,” said Glock, and they all laughed, even Loklinth.
“Seriously now,” Loklinth said, tapping his hand lightly on the surface of the table. “The Barbro Team; how many of them are there, Glock?”
“Six of them,” Glock replied. “Six of them were involved in 1986, but some have died since.”
“OK, let’s do it this way. I’ll keep Modin under surveillance and you guys keep a low profile,” Loklinth said. “I don’t want to see any gray retirees out there in the Stockholm archipelago this summer. Especially not in Grisslehamn. Got that?”