CHAPTER 40

After the meal, Julia, Modin, and Axman lounged on the two couches with coffee and gingerbread cookies. It was dark and had started to rain. Water was running from the gutters above the window. It splattered pleasantly onto the rocks below.

Julia had lit three candles and started a fire in the open fireplace, which gave off a flickering light that could probably be seen far out to sea. But not one vessel could be seen on the dark gray sea. Everything was quiet except the sound of the rain hitting the roof protecting the three friends. Small birds had found shelter in the evergreens on the islet. Only a lone seagull circled high above them.

“What do you actually know about the murder, Modin. It’ll help us brainstorm together,” Julia said.

“All I have is loose ends. It all started last summer when I was contacted by Amelia Carlson. She’s rich and influential, hobnobs in top international business circles. She recruited me to solve some of the great mysteries of the Cold War. When I first met her, she wanted me to look into the submarine intrusions that occurred in the 1980s. She said the time was ripe. A new era had dawned.”

“As it happened, Harry Nuder, one of my best friends, pilots large vessels through the straits out here. He told me a story about a Russian submarine that was sunk near the Understen lighthouse, not far from here. He’d actually witnessed it as it happened. A right wing politician who had been involved in the incident had given him the go-ahead to tell me about it. In hindsight, it seems as if all had been approved from above. I was supposed to find that Soviet sub. Not sure why, though. Maybe to hurt Military Special Ops. Those who hired me would foot the expenses, and then some. I was given a credit card with an open limit. I did not need to account for every cent.”

“Quite the opposite, actually. I found the sub, as planned, but Loklinth and Special Ops hushed it all up immediately. A huge cover-up to save good relations with Russia. I was told to shut up. The fact that there was a downed Russian sub on the Swedish sea board was supposed to remain a secret.”

“So, a business woman hired you to find the sub and then essentially paid you to keep quiet? Was this all about business and to save our investments in Russia?” Julia asked. “Money and job opportunities always comes first.”

She’s listening as attentively as she would in her professional role as an intelligence analyst, Axman thought. Her seriousness makes Modin’s story credible. These are not the rantings of a category five conspiracy freak, no matter how crazy it all sounds.

Axman could see the two of them gently gliding toward one another. Could this result in a happy union? Modin had a heavy cross to bear, and any new relationship would be difficult. I bet Julia has some baggage, too. Who doesn’t, he mused.

“In exchange for my silence, or rather, our silence,” Modin added, pointing at Axman, “I was given a reward. I was allowed to spend one night in the top secret archives of the Swedish Security Service, and look at secret counter-espionage files. I seized the moment. I claimed that I wanted to read the report about the submarine intrusions, when, in fact, I wanted to pin down those guilty of the cover-up of the Soviet threat in the 1980s. I’m talking about the cover-up that protected spies, the Palme murderers, and those responsible for the M/S Estonia ferry disaster. I think those incidents are all connected. A good start, as I thought, would be clearing up the Palme murder case. If I can find out who’s behind that particular cover-up, maybe I can find out who’s behind the others.”

“I quite agree,” Julia said as she leaned forward and across the table to reach the candles. “The murder case is a good start. I was working at Defense Radio back then. After the murder, all private radio traffic was completely blocked from high up. It was ridiculous. A few of the oldies at Defense Radio compared the enforced silence to that right after the DC-3 had been shot down in 1952. It was a complete cover-up, even for those of us who had been given the green light to examine classified material originating with western intelligence organizations.”

“Skandia House is a key factor in the murder. The files mention a group that called itself the Barbro Team, and the East German security agency, the Stasi. A big red stamp showed that the murder had been investigated, and that the investigation had been closed in November 1986 by then prosecutor Klas Berg, now the very dead Superintendent of the Security Service. Before I could read what he had written, I was interrupted and chucked out of the archive. Everything was on high alert and lock-down because, coincidentally, Klas Berg had died of a sudden heart attack that very night.”

Modin realized that his pulse had elevated. His back and the palms of his hands had become warm. He wiped his hands on his jeans, had a sip of lukewarm coffee, and awaited his friends’ reaction.

“Wait a minute, Klas Berg, the Security Service chief who died, was the one who closed the Palme investigation?” Axman said.

“Yes, and he was the one who allowed me access to the archives. At the time, it seemed that they rescinded my permission to be at the archives because they suspected foul play and that my presence had something to do with it. It didn’t, of course.”

“I believe you,” Julia said. “A cover-up means danger for those involved. You know that, right?”

“Why are you surprised the case is closed?” Axman interrupted. their little moment, smiling. “They caught the guy, didn’t they? I thought it was Christer Pettersson, a criminal.”

“I don’t think so. If Christer Pettersson had fired the two quick shots that killed Palme, they wouldn’t have had to cancel the investigation and declare the file top secret. Instead, they would have been quite forthcoming with the results of he investigation. Bottom line, for some reason they couldn’t walk around shooting their mouths off about those who were involved. Could have been the authorities, could have been the Security Service, could have been a foreign power,” Julia said. “That’s normally why cases are closed and labeled top secret. And if it were to become public that the Swedish government is covering up the murder of Prime Minister Palme, Swedish national security and the nation’s credibility would be severely compromised. That’s why anyone touching this is in danger.”

“Wasn’t it Olof Palme’s widow Lisbet who pointed to Christer Pettersson?” Axman said.

“What a mess,” Julia said, putting her hand under her chin. “Back then it was an open secret at Defense Radio that there were people who wanted to get rid of Palme. And whoever these people were, they tried to get rid of him before. Remember the Harvard Affair? A clear case of planned character assassination.”

“Well, Olof Palme traveled to the U.S. to give a series of lectures so he could get his son into Harvard without having to go through the normal procedures,” Modin explained. “Palme forgot to mention his tax free income from these lectures to the Swedish Tax Authorities. A Swedish journalist, Jan Guillou, blindsided him with it in a live broadcast on radio. Oddly enough, the journalist happened to be leaning ultra-left. This didn’t make sense at the time, given that the ultra-left was Palme’s die-hard constituency. An indication that Palme had enemies all over the place.”

“What does the Harvard Affair actually have to do with Palme’s murder?” Axman asked. “Isn’t that just speculation?”

“Palme’s appeal statement regarding this tax return vanished without a trace from the court archives a few hours before the murder on February 28, 1986. That’s not speculation.”

“It’s just too much of a coincidence. At about 6:30 P.M. on that fateful Friday evening, someone stole Olof Palme’s tax appeal document from the County Court archives and erased all traces in the database about the matter. Later that evening, around 11 P.M., Palme is murdered. That’s all out in the open in the investigative commission report on the Palme murder, SOU 1999:88. See for yourself.”

During their conversation, Modin had surfed in the Swedish government website, looking for documents about public investigations. He found the investigative commission report on the Palme murder, SOU 1999:88, opened the document discussing the Harvard Affair, and turned the screen so Axman and Julia could see.

“I agree. That is a bit too coincidental,” Axman said after he read the statement on Modin’s lap top. “The odds that a prime minister is murdered on the same evening as his appeal calls a judge’s decision into question and the document dealing with all this disappears, are so low they can’t be calculated. In other words, the probability is around zero. Solving this theft might well lead to the murderer. Or murderers, if your conspiracy theories are true. Did no one ever find out what had happened at the County Court archives? Was anyone suspected of stealing the paperwork?”

“Not as far as I know,” Modin said. “But I don’t think anyone ever established a connection. After Palme’s death, the tax case was likely classified.”

“Either this is just coincidence and thus a false lead,” Julia said, “or it’s disinformation planted by the murderers.”

“The real murderers could have stolen the documents to pin the blame on those who would benefit if the document disappears.”

“A right wing group that didn’t want the case to be tried in court, so that Palme would continue to look like a tax evader,” Modin explained.

“Exactly. Nobody would be stupid enough to steal documents—documents pointing straight at you, no less—and murder the Prime Minister the very same night. Sure looks like a decoy arranged by the real murderers. And that would suggest that a group of people was behind the murder. A group with the resources to manipulate the data system of the state. No way Christer Pettersson did any of this, “ Julia said laughing. “It’s too advanced an operation to break into a court of law and delete things from its database. I think this is the work of insiders, analysts—intelligence analysts, perhaps.”

“I can show you one more thing,” Modin said grabbing Julia’s laptop and pressing the keys. “Listen to what the head of the Security Service at the time, P.G. Näss is saying here.” He read aloud from the screen: “Either it’s a question of a lone lunatic who had incredible good luck, or there was a very large team behind the murder.”

“Maybe Christer Pettersson enjoyed an incredible amount of good luck,” Axman said, laughing out loud.

Modin checked the investigative commission report again, then searched within the document for the Harvard Affair. He found something and turned the laptop so everyone could read.

On March 13th, 1986, the company responsible for the computer system DAFA announced that a delete transaction, i.e. an erasure, had taken place at 18:23 hours on February 28th. On that same day, the county court investigated who had checked out on flextime after that point in time. On March 14th, 1986 DAFA confirmed that the delete transaction at 18:23 was in reference to the Olof Palme tax case. Furthermore, the DAFA reported that the computer in question at the County Court had been switched off at 16:00 on February 28th and had been switched on again between 18:23 and 18:30.

“Look, this confirms that someone entered the County Court after closing time on that Friday evening and deleted Olof Palme’s tax case.”

“As I see it,” Julia said after reading, “this means that the deletion at the County Court a few hours before the murder is linked to the murder itself. It also means that a professional organization, not merely a gang of thugs or lawless ultra-right extremists, is involved. This is an assassination that was carefully and methodically planned beforehand. But this analysis does, of course, assume that the deletion really does have something to do with the murder.”

“Ninety-nine percent probability statistically,” Axman said. “Coincidences do occur… occasionally. So we can’t be 100 percent sure.”

“Eighty percent would do for me,” Modin said. “I have read the Palme dossier and what I read makes sense. It is a job from inside the intelligence community. I really think so and I’m going to prove it.”

“The way I see it,” Axman said, “the deletion of the tax records is not foolproof evidence. People make mistakes even with legal data. However, the fact that this mistake occurred just four to five hours before the murder, and suspiciously after office hours on a Friday night, makes the mathematician in me think that it is likely not a coincidence. I wonder why this wasn’t followed up. This looks to me like an expressway leading directly to the heart of the murder.”

“A little more coffee,” Julia said. “It’s going to be a long night, I can see.”