John Axman was on the pier, sunbathing, while watching Modin, Bergman and Nuder playing water polo in the inlet. They were wearing black wetsuits and bathing caps. There were goalposts on each side of the inlet.
It was early evening. There was a ridge of high pressure over the island and the air was warm. But it was still too cold to go swimming unless you had a self-destructive urge.
Axman shivered and felt happy they hadn’t talked him into joining the game. Although the inlet did warm up in the spring each year, cool nights would continue well into July. Axman knew it, as did every Swede wishing for warmer weather. After a long winter where only the sauna or a trip to Thailand would warm you up, the weather became one of the most important things in your life, especially in the season between winter and summer.
The second half of May had a tendency to bring stable weather conditions on the Baltic coast. And the forecast promised that the high pressure system would stay until the beginning of the coming week. Axman had been on many diving expeditions at just that time of year, and weather wise now would be a good time to get ready.
But the crew was not in particularly good shape. Modin was somewhat incapacitated by his recurring dizziness. He had been warned off diving by the doctors, although he was the type to ignore doctors’ orders, and did whatever he damn well liked anyway.
Bergman was out of practice. He and Modin had done a remarkable dive down to the mini sub at a depth of some 450 feet the summer before, but since then, Bergman hadn’t gone diving at all.
They have to do a training dive before going to Understen lighthouse, Axman thought and turned over on his side. His shoulder blades were beginning to ache. He sat up and pulled a cold bottle of beer out of the blue cooler bag.
Axman felt secure despite the events of the previous night. No one could possibly know who had broken into Special Ops. They hadn’t left anything behind, except Bergman’s backpack, but there were no markings or labels on it that could lead them to the owner. On previous occasions, before and after similar operations, Axman had been anxious. Hanging around Anton Modin as a police officer was not a good career move. He didn’t want to lose his job but he liked the life of an outlaw out here in the archipelago; he felt like a pirate. He could imagine living like this permanently; he didn’t even miss his boyfriend Axel all that much. Axel and his art in Paris. He was pursuing what he needed in France, while he was doing what he needed here at home. He was fighting against a corrupt and illegal Swedish government department, that’s what he had to do to be myself. Besides, Anton really needs me right now, he thought. Axel and I are quite different and need to do our own thing for a while. When the time comes, we’ll move in together, make love, and care for one another. We give each other freedom and that’s a good thing.
I should call Axel and tell him how much I love him. That I care for him and yet I don’t want to see him until the summer has passed. He would like that and laugh. What a nice laugh he has!
He took a good gulp of his beer and stretched himself out again on the pier. He could hear the rush of the waves created by the polo match splashing against the pier as his thoughts drifted to Julia. Someone should sail over to Black Island and check up on her. Better yet, she should be here with us, under our protection. After all, her brother, the German with the dragon breath, as Modin called him, could come back, and Lord knows what he would do next time round. Modin had told him in confidence that her brother had used her as a punching bag.
“Hey Axman, fling us a cold beer please.”
Modin was howling from the dock ladder.
“Anyone else for beer?” Axman called out, as he held open the lid of the cooler bag. As the polo players climbed up one by one, Axman handed out beers. They all lay down on the pier and enjoyed the sun. The chill of the water had crept in under their wetsuits, and chilled them to the bone.
“Isn’t it beautiful around here?” Modin said. “And I won.”
“Oh, come on,” Nuder said. “A draw at the most.” He laughed and looked up at the sky. “So you figure Special Ops are going to come after us?” he asked Modin.
“I don’t know, maybe. The tiger has been let out of its cage, I can assure you of that. The Loco is at full throttle,” he said without really thinking what he was saying. “The only thing we can rely on just now is the metal box of secrets. I will wait to open it until we know more. Just to keep us all safe. Us and Bergman’s daughter. The sealed box may give us a better position against Special Ops, at least for now.”
“Yes,” Bergman said and lowered his head.
“Do you really think they’ll come out here,” Nuder asked. “How would they know it was us?”
“There are still enough members of the Barbro Team around,” Axman said and gazed at his and Modin’s MP5s at the pier deck. “And they are experienced and ruthless; things could get nasty.”
“Slow down, Axman,” Modin said. “If things get out of hand, we can move the base out to Black Island. But I don’t think they will come after us. Loklinth knows what’s in the box; he can and will stop Crack Of Dawn, if he wants. That’s why it is important not to open the box, I think. A sealed box will keep us out of prison when this operation once is over. We need to give Loklinth something to negotiate with the Minister of Justice. “
“And where is the box right now?” Axman said.
“I’ve buried it in a safe place. I need more time to plan the dive down at the Understen lighthouse. For dive we must.”
“May I once again remind you that it’s about 650 to 700 feet deep around there,” Bergman said. “That’s a suicidal depth.”
Axman secretly agreed, but said nothing. He knew full well that if the situation demanded it, Modin would dive on his own. Nothing could stop him.
Axman and Modin had studied the nautical charts of the area they had located thanks to the logbooks from the Visborg and the Herkules. The SOSUS, which they assumed had been lying there since the summer of 1986, had been installed at a great depth. With any luck, it would have been attached to the side of the trench in the sea, and therefore not be right at the bottom, but in somewhat shallower water. However, Axman reasoned that it was installed as deep down as possible to ensure that the Russians couldn’t locate and remove it. Most likely, they reasoned, this had set off the submarine-chasing activities by the Swedish Navy in the mid-1980s. A cat-and-mouse game between the Soviet Union and the U.S. played in Swedish waters. From his time as a Navy diver, Axman knew that the Americans had a remote controlled submersible vehicle that could move along the seabed, the so-called Sea Tractor, which could be steered remotely from a submarine, like the U.S. NR-1, a smallish and agile mini sub. Using water pressure and a kind of plough, the Sea Tractor could dig trenches and therefore bury and conceal the SOSUS cables. That would make its detection by the Russians that much more difficult.
“Modin,” Axman said. “Just imagine if that mini sub we found last summer, the one we were unable to identify, was not a Russian, but an American sub. The Americans had every reason to be here and guard their equipment. Especially after Ronald Pelton revealed everything about the Holystone equipment to the Soviets, in 1980 or 1981, as you mentioned earlier. After all, it was in the autumn of 1981 that the Soviet submarine, the U-137, ran aground in the Karlskrona archipelago near the restricted military area. There must be a connection. The Americans would have been present. A war was being fought out in the murky depths. A third world war in miniature.”
“What you said last year in connection to the sailors on the sub, American black operators dressed up as Poles, isn’t as crazy as it first appeared,” Modin said addressing Axman. “Especially if it was CIA personnel. There are cases in history where intelligence operations did not only copy the equipment of the enemy but even language, names, and personal details. If the submarine you found looked Polish, it could very well have been one used by an American SEALs unit or by the Russian Spetsnaz.”
“The documents and passports that were in the bag you brought up, weren’t they Polish?” Bergman asked.
“Yes, that’s what it looked like. But you never know. If we toy with the idea that this was a SEALs unit in disguise, we would have a simple explanation as to why there was a cover-up, why everything became classified information, and why the bodies of the dead crew were whisked away in a hurry and vanished.”
“But we don’t know, that’s just speculation,” Bergman said.
“I know,” Modin said. “But I will find out,” he said, got up, and walked toward the sea cottage.