“Palme is planning for the whole of the Baltic Sea littoral to become a Scandinavian nuclear-free zone.”
Supreme Commander Lennart Ljung’s secret diaries, June 2, 1983)
On the surface of the water, tranquil until a few moments before, a steady string of bubbles could be detected in two places. Bergman was sitting on the pier making small talk with Harry Nuder, while keeping an eye on the divers at the same time. Suddenly a flash came from under the surface. Then another.
“Seems to be going okay,” Nuder said.
“We’ll have to see if they can get out of their gear on their own,”
Bergman said, laughing.
Two large objects not unlike boulders broke the surface where the bubbles had been. Anton Modin and John Axman’s heads covered in neoprene emerged. They took off their masks and started to talk about depths and shutter speeds. They seemed excited and turned their faces away from the intense sunlight being reflected in the water.
Modin was carrying a camera with a speedlite, which he set off a couple of times. He then laid it on the pier.
“Is the equipment in good condition? And what about the bodies of those old men?”
“Everything’s fine,” Axman said. Modin said nothing.
Axman climbed up the metal ladder carrying his heavy equipment: two double oxygen cylinders, solid objects containing nineteen liters a piece, plus four smaller air tanks on his stomach. They had been swimming around the inlet, Axman told Bergman, to practice putting on and taking off the heavy equipment, and to test Modin’s camera. “Everything seems to be working just fine.”
Bergman looked at Modin, who seemed to be worried. He was shaking his head as if he had water in his ears. That doesn’t look quite right, Bergman thought, but didn’t say anything. Modin and Axman were two of the best divers in the country, and he was not the only one to know it.
“How is Modin?” Bergman asked, almost in a whisper. “Is he really fit to go diving?”
“Yes, no problems there,” Axman said.
Modin still said nothing. When his cell phone pinged, announcing a message, he turned away, pretending everything was fine, but his facial expression as he shut off his cell phone said otherwise.