Strindberg's Star

S t r i n d b e r g ’ s S t a r

Jan Wallentin

13th May 1896. A letter from my wife, who has read in the newspaper that a Herr Strindberg is to journey to the North Pole by balloon. I advise her of the error, that it is the son of my cousin who intends to risk his life in the cause of a great scientific discovery. (August Strindberg, Inferno, Purgatory)

That which is far off, and exceeding deep, who can find it out? (Ecclesiastes 7:24)

4 * t h e i n v i t a t i o n

His face had definitely sagged and despite all the efforts of the TV make‐up girl nothing could disguise the fact. She had tried hard: fifteen minutes with sponge, brush and peach‐coloured mineral powder. Now, after she had replaced his pilot glasses, instead of having black rings under his eyes he had pink. It looked unhealthy against his grey cheeks. She patted him gently on the shoulder and said: “That’s it, Don. The presenter will come and fetch you soon.” Then she smiled at him in the mirror and tried to look satisfied. But he knew what she was thinking. Ein farshlepteh krenk, a lingering sickness, that’s what aging was. His shoulder bag was resting against the foot of the swivel chair and after the make‐up girl went out, Don bent over and started rummaging around in its contents of tablet containers, hypodermics and blister packs. He extracted two round 20mg tablets of diazepam. He sat up again, placed them on his tongue and swallowed. In the fluorescent light of the mirror, the minute hand of the wall clock moved on. Four minutes past six. The morning news droned from the monitor. Eleven minutes until the first sofa guests made an appearance. There was a knock, and a shadowy figure appeared in the doorway. “Is this where they do the make‐up?” Don nodded at the tall figure. “I’m on TV4 next,” the man said. “So the girls had better put on enough to last.” He took a few steps over the mottled grey vinyl floor and sat down next to Don. “We’re on at the same time, aren’t we?” “Yes, looks like it,” said Don. The swivel chair creaked as the man leant closer. “I’ve read about you in the papers. You’re the one who’s the expert, right?” “Not really my speciality,” said Don. “But I’ll do my best.” He stood up and hooked his jacket off the back of the chair. “It said in the papers you knew about this kind of thing,” said the other man.

“Yes, well, they ought to know,” said Don. He pulled on his corduroy jacket and just as he was about to sling the strap of his bag over his shoulder he felt the man grab it.

“You don’t have to be so bloody full of yourself. I was the one who found it all. And by the way…” The man hesitated. “I think there’s something you’d be able to help me with.” “Really?” “It’s, um…” The man glanced quickly at the door, but there was no‐one there. “There’s one more thing I found down there. A secret, you might say.”

“A secret?” With the help of the shoulder strap the man pulled Don a little closer.

“I’ve got it at home in Falun, and I’d really appreciate it if you could come and…” His voice faded away. Don followed the man’s gaze towards the doorway where the programme presenter was standing waiting for them in a frumpy claret jacket and skirt. “Well… so you’ve got to know each other, then?” She forced a stressed smile. “Perhaps you’d like to talk more afterwards?” She indicated the way towards the studio corridor and the red On Air sign. “This way, Don Titelman.”

1 N i f l h e i m r

With every step Erik Hall’s rubber boots sank more deeply into the ground and his legs had lost all feeling long ago. Not much further now, surely. He had always been teased about his heavy body, and with three diving bags slung over his back it was hardly surprising the waterlogged moss gave way. What was surprising was how quickly the forest had darkened since he slammed shut the boot of the car in the lay‐by. Then, looking out over the ditch, the edge of the forest had seemed so bright and inviting. Now, after a few hours of laboured walking, a milky fog was drifting through the undergrowth, but he still had no regrets. When he glimpsed the glade beyond the last trees he came to a halt and for a moment felt uncertain. It looked so different today, with a thick veil of mist hovering over the drooping grass. Then he caught sight of the remains of the old fence. The rotten black stumps stuck out like warning fingers in front of the slope that led down to the mine opening. He switched off his handheld GPS, dropped his load of equipment and stretched out his compressed vertebrae, his back creaking. It was ferociously cold here, just like yesterday, when he had managed to find his way to the abandoned mine for the first time. The stench was the same, too. He breathed it in through his nostrils: putrid meat, mouldy cheese, the stink of week‐ old rubbish. The mist had reduced the light to dusk and it was hard to make out any details as he took the last steps towards the precipitous shaft, but once his eyes had acclimatised he saw the pit props. They began at a depth of about thirty metres and supported the shaft’s walls at uneven intervals down into the apparently bottomless hole. An image of gappy, blackened teeth flitted through his mind, like looking into the mouth of a very old man. He stepped back a few paces and breathed in deeply through his mouth a couple of times, thinking it was time to give himself a pat on the back. Finding your way through the undergrowth in this gloom and getting to the right place again, that had to be pretty skilful. Using sat nav to make your way from Falun to an address out in Sundborn or Sågmyra was hardly an achievement compared with finding the right spot more than 5 kilometres straight out into the wilderness – that was something else. Most, if not all, abandoned mine shafts could be found marked in detail on maps – the surveyors at the Mining Inspectorate had seen to that ‐ but this one, this opening, had clearly been overlooked. And this time he had dragged his kit along with him.

It was while Erik Hall was sliding open the zip of his first diving bag that he became aware of the silence. He could not remember exactly how long ago it was, but at first, when he had just pulled off the motorway, he had still been able to hear the traffic. Not especially loudly, of course, but enough for him to feel that he was not completely alone. He remembered hearing the hammering of a woodpecker, the rustle of small creatures, a bird flying from branch to branch. But then, after the mist had come down and his load had become so heavy, then he had hardly been able to hear anything except his own breathing and the sharp crack of breaking sticks as he struggled through the thickening undergrowth. And now – nothing. Well, perhaps something. The faint buzzing of some flies gathering around him, hoping to find food. Well, they would be disappointed. The first bag contained only equipment: nylon rope, hooks, and bolts, an electric drill, fins, lifejacket and torch. And lastly: the double sided titanium knife with its concave, saw‐toothed cutting edge. When he had thrown everything out onto the yellowing grass, he opened the bag’s side pocket. Inside were the Finnish precision instruments in protective cases: a depth gauge to use once he had sunk below the surface of the water in the flooded shaft, and a clinometer to enable him to gauge the height and slope of the mine’s passages. He would have to do without a compass. It would be of no use anyway in the iron ore rock below. The flies had increased. They hovered about his head like a cloud of soot, buzzing around him as he lifted the heavy metal cylinders out of the second bag. Annoyed, Erik waved the insects away from his mouth as he began to check the pressure in his twin air cylinders. When everything was assembled he carefully attached them to the steel backplate. He fastened the first stage regulator and bound the diving equipment with the inflated lifejacket. Then he took a few quick steps back. The sooty cloud followed him at a distance. Balancing on the gravel he pulled off his green rubber boots and then his camouflage trousers, followed by his windproof jacket. Wearing only his thermal underwear, and with black insects crawling over his face and neck, he opened the third bag. Among the carabiners and safety catches was the bulky drysuit – a seven millimetre triple‐ layered black neoprene skin specially developed to withstand diving in freezing water. He breathed heavily as the lower part of the suit puckered round his knees. Then he bent forward and forced the rubber reinforced diving shoes over his heels. Grimacing, he stood up again, fitting first his left hand then his right into the latex cuffs. He adjusted the suit and finally pulled on the black full face neoprene hood. The only visible parts left for the flies to attack were his eyes and the upper part of his cheeks. Swaying backwards and forwards he adjusted the telescopic torso to maximum to accommodate his bulging stomach.

Erik picked up the bundle of life jacket and diving equipment and dragged it through the mist towards the opening of the mine shaft. The rancid fumes of rotten eggs almost made him change his mind, but once he had managed to work the parcel past the block of stone at the edge of the shaft the decision was made. He quickly began lowering it downwards. Forty, fifty meters – he had been able to see that far down – but the line just kept on playing out. It was only after several minutes that the tension on the line indicated the bundle was floating somewhere way down in the darkness. He secured the parcel by wrapping the rope several times around a sturdy pine growing at the edge of the almost circular glade of trees. On his way back through the mist he picked up the bundle of bolts and carabiners. Back at the shaft he knelt down awkwardly. The harsh wail of the power drill broke the silence at last, and soon he was screwing the first bolt into the rock. He pulled hard. It would hold. It was time to put on the climbing harness. He snapped the straps together across his chest and fitted the self‐braking descender which would allow him to regulate the speed of his downward fall. Then Erik Hall swung himself out over the edge of the shaft and began his own descent.

Anyone searching the Internet could find blurred images of urban explorers in Los Angeles who wriggled their way mile after mile through the claustrophobic sewerage system. You could find stories about Italians who crawled among rats and rubbish in antique catacombs, and Russians who described expeditions to long‐forgotten remains of prisons from the Soviet era, hundreds of miles underground. And then there were the Swedes who lowered themselves deep down into the pitch black waters of flooded, dilapidated mine shafts. A group of these called themselves Baggbo Divers and did their diving around Borlänge. There was also Gruf in Gävle, the Wärmland Underground in Karlstad, and a few groups in Bergslagen and Umeå. And then there were those like Erik Hall, who dived solo and preferred their own company. Because they shared tips on equipment and shafts that were worth investigating, all the country’s mine divers knew about each others’ existence, and year in and year out the same people were involved. People, well… without exception it was only men who took part. However, a group of young women had recently begun posting pictures on the net of their own mine dives. They called themselves Dyke Divers. No‐one seemed to know where they came from, or who they actually were, and they never answered any questions ‐ at least, not the questions Erik Hall had asked. In the beginning, when he first visited the girls’ site, he had found only a few grainy photos. Then films showing advanced diving had been added and yesterday, out of the blue, there was a shot taken in a mine shaft in Dalarna. The picture had shown two women in diving suits in a narrow mine passage: pale cheeks, blood red lips and shining black hair falling over their shoulders. Behind their faces you could see, sprayed in blue paint, ‘1st September, depth 166 metres’. Below the photo the girls had given some GPS coordinates marking a place near Falu copper mine. The position was only 20 or so kilometres from Erik Hall’s summer cottage:

Flooded 18th century shaft that we found on this / kopparberget1786.jpg/ map, blessing the Falun provincial archives. We put Petzl bolts all the way down to the water, beyond the iron waste there are long passages.

No country for old men ; )

The self‐braking descender lowered him silently into the depths. He could still make out the cloud of flies up at the opening, but down here in the dark Erik was suspended alone. He was breathing only through his mouth now because the rotten sulphur stench was making him feel dizzy. He could see where the Dyke Divers had positioned their bolts and it was clear they knew what they were doing, but as he looked around it was like slipping back into another century: corroded fixings for ladders, dead end passages half blocked by cave‐ins, marks in the rock from wedges and pick axes. He pushed himself off from the wall and swung past a few twisted hooks, which once must have held the mine hoisting equipment in place. In the flickering light from his head lamp he could see chalked calculations in old Swedish weights and measurements from the eighteenth century which had long since lost all meaning. There was no room for mistakes when you let yourself down a mine shaft alone. He tried to persuade himself that it shouldn’t be too difficult ‐ a vertical drop and then water. After all, the blackened pit props, the mine cavity’s gaping teeth, had withstood the pressure from the walls for hundreds of years. 10

But even so, older cavities were never really safe because fire had been used to blast the ore from the rock, and rocks mined with fire often held hidden cracks. Then the bolt which at first seemed secure would not only loosen but cause the ore itself to split, with the result that one of the thousand kilo blocks above his head could suddenly break loose and hurtle down from the mine wall. How much further was there to go? Erik broke a light stick and let it fall. The glow disappeared down into the dark, but then he heard a splash much quicker than he had dared to hope. Far below, the stick glittered green, bobbing in the black water. The meter indicated a depth of 73 metres and it was starting to get very cold. Frost gleamed on the iron ore in the wall in front of him, and the next light stick landed on a piece of floating ice. When he looked down he noticed a small plateau immediately above the flooded area. It lay ten to twenty metres to the right, so he was forced to swing himself carefully along the rough blocks of stone. A minute or two later Erik was standing on the ledge and in front of him was the water.

He crouched down and began to haul in the line attached to the bundle of air tubes and the diving vest which he knew was floating out there somewhere. It was unexpectedly leaden to pull, seemingly wedged in the ice, but after working at it stubbornly he finally managed to get everything up onto the narrow ledge. Now came the most important part. He took out a small can of red metallic spray paint from the leg pocket of his drysuit and in a few quick movements sprayed a large E and a W. Beneath the letters Erik Hall wrote ‘7th September, depth 90 metres’. He took out his underwater camera, held it at arm’s length and took a few pictures, then looked at the screen. His signature could be clearly seen on the rock behind his head. He realised suddenly that he wanted to get in touch with those girls. He wrenched off the neoprene hood and ran his fingers through his hair. That was better. After a few more photo flashes he viewed the results on the camera’s screen. The damp had made his fair hair curly. His hair was thinning a little, perhaps, now he was in his thirties, but no‐one would really notice, and the dark circles under his eyes gave a dramatic impression, he thought. As for the double chin, that could probably be interpreted as shadow. Erik sank back on his heels and thought. This was actually incredibly stupid. No‐one knew he was here, and even if the increasing ice turned out not to be a problem, what could he realistically expect to find once he had dived down under the water? Poor visibility, no chart of the passages ‐ he did not even know how deep the mine was. Perhaps finding the shaft and taking himself down to this ledge was enough to rouse the girls’ interest and get them to respond, once he had sent them the pictures with his signature? Then he pulled himself together. He had dragged this damned equipment through the forest for more than an hour and somewhere down there beneath him, at a depth of a hundred and sixty‐six metres, there must be some kind of dry passage where the girls had been able to stand and spray their marks.

Erik strapped his fins over the tabs on the heels of his rubber diving shoes, struggled into the diving vest with its heavy cylinders and tightened the tube of the rotating intake valve. He inserted the regulator into his mouth, took a few test breaths and then let himself fall backwards into the black water.

The neon yellow rope fastened round his waist snapped off a shard from the piece of floating ice as it followed him under the surface. The life line was connected to the last bolt in the mine wall and he presumed it would, as always, help him find his way back if he lost his way in the murky water. Most of the light from his head lamp was swallowed up by the dark walls, but despite this the beam reached quite some way. Under the ice the mine’s water was clearer than he had hoped and he could see perhaps ten metres in front of him. But that could soon change. There could be different layers of water further down, and silt could be stirred up and reduce visibility to twenty or thirty centimetres. His weightbelt pulled him slowly deeper. How cold could it be? Below four degrees? He must remember to keep moving. He drummed his fingers against the neoprene inside his diving gloves. If his hands became cold and numb a simple tangle of lines would be enough to drown him. Then there was a sudden flash from something metal caught in the narrow beam of light. It must have been some distance away. Pushing off from the wall of the shaft he propelled himself out into the black space. The line followed him through the water like a tail. Then he switched on his yellow torch and its beam together with the rays from his head lamp found its way downwards. The bottom of the shaft became visible. On coarse sand stood a cistern, at least two metres high, its copper rivets reflecting the light back. He ran the beam from his torch along its side. There was something else made of metal, sharp triangles. He pulled out the circle saw. Up above on land it might have screeched, but down here it seemed to rotate soundlessly on its hub. As he moved his gloved hand he happened to knock over a kind of wooden pump. It created a cloud of dust in the sand. There, a little further on, lay the remains of pallets used to carry the ore out of the passages. Erik moved his fins carefully, swimming weightlessly forward over some wheelbarrows and a leaning pickaxe. The floor of the shaft was like a museum in the dark, with everything preserved as it had looked the day the light had been shut out for the last time. His underwater camera flashed. There were sledge hammers and iron appliances with peeling paint, a corroded crusher, drills and mortise chisels, split wooden pipes for pumping up water. And over there … a narrow gauge railway which disappeared into the darkness. Erik let his body to sink down and land beside the rails. Looking at the manometer he read 21 metres below the surface. Even taking into account a gentle ascent to avoid getting the bends, he had almost enough air left in the cylinders for another hour. He stretched out his three‐fingered glove and began to slowly to pull himself along the rails. The railway track led him away from the tools and machines of the mine floor. A tangle of lines which once must have been slung along the walls of the shaft now writhed like eels through the water. He glided under them, floating just above the sand. Bubbles from the breathing apparatus hissed in deep breaths behind his neck. Then he had the feeling he was swimming through a wedge‐shaped section, the sides of the walls coming closer and closer. He slowed down by keeping the edges of his fins against the rails. Once he had come to a standstill he shone the light from his lamps over the shaft walls. That was when he caught sight of a timbered opening into a mine passage, where someone had fastened a piece of yellow material to a barb. Erik pulled himself a few more metres further on. Instead of material hanging there by the entrance to the tunnel he saw a piece of 7mm bright yellow neoprene, with traces of triple seams, intended to be clearly visible under the water. The girls must have cut up an old drysuit 12

to use as diving markers. The entrance to the passage was perhaps three meters high and in the centre stood a rusty iron ore truck, but there was plenty of room above it. Erik swam closer and could see that the mine tunnel continued for at least ten metres. This could be the beginning of a long system covering several kilometres, with new locations and shafts, or simply a dead‐end. But this was the route the girls had taken, and somewhere a little further along they had been able to free their hair and stand on dry ground. He looked at the meter; 50 minutes’ diving time left. When Erik had clumsily wriggled over the rusted truck he was met by a tunnel floor covered in ice crystals. Long pointed stalagmites of frozen water grew up all along the rails like thistles on a railway embankment. He pulled himself along metre by metre through the narrow passage, but there was something strange about the way the rails and the tunnel floor had begun to slope. It sloped somehow… upwards? Erik got out the clinometer. It was true, the passage had actually begun to ascend, and quite significantly. 24 degrees, he calculated. That meant… he did some quick mental arithmetic while he slowly swam on under the overhanging rock. Eighty, ninety metres more was all it would take to bring him above the flood level, and after that the passage ought to be dry. Or rather passages, plural, because now he had come to a fork. Two openings lead on, one to the right and the other to the left, and by the right opening a strip of yellow neoprene was hanging. No doubt the girls had wanted to make sure they could find their way back. Erik ran his gloved hand along the strip and then he swam slowly past it and into the right‐hand passage. Ten metres, twenty, thirty, then the space began to narrow. If he stretched out his arms on both sides he would soon be able to brush the frosty ore with his fingertips. At forty metres his shoulders grazed the rocks on each side. At forty‐five metres two iron supports formed a narrow doorway. Erik twisted his body sideways and managed to squeeze through. By now he had come fifty metres in. There should be at the most thirty left until the passage became dry, but he came up against two more props, so close together that he would have to get one of them out of the way if he was to go any further. He directed the torchlight at the prop mountings on the left, in the roof and on the floor. It would be impossible to move them, but the footings on the right prop had rusted away and at the top, while two bolts seemed screwed tightly in place, two had become loose. He grabbed hold of the right prop and moved it warily. It gave way a few millimetres. What if he really forced it ‐ what would happen then? Erik hung suspended over the ice crystals on the floor, growing more and more nervous. Then he aimed the beam from the torch out into the dark as far as it would reach. And there, as if mocking him, hung one more yellow strip near the tunnel roof. Somehow the girls had squeezed their way past. 1st September, depth 166 metres… but the Dyke Divers were thinner. Erik shook the prop once more. This time it moved, suddenly, a whole ten centimetres, and as it moved it drew with it a landslide of pebbles and gravel which in an instant turned the water a cloudy black. Instinctively he rolled himself into a ball at the thought of the roof collapsing. When the visibility had cleared, he slowly realised how close the tunnel had come to collapsing. Gently he released the prop, turned his large body around and began to swim back. When he had returned to the place where the tunnel divided, he used the tip of his fins to bring himself to a stop. In front of him lay the narrow passage back out to the mine floor, the shaft wall 13

and the forest. Or why not… He hung there, suspended. Then Erik Hall’s two light sources swung back and illuminated the opening of the left‐hand passage. Still forty minutes of air left. There was time. When he swam into the left‐hand passage he noticed that this, too, sloped slightly upwards, and this time he swam easily between the pair of props. He covered ninety, possibly a hundred metres in only a few minutes. A hundred and twenty, a hundred and thirty – it could not be far now, not with this angle of incline. Erik moved his fins fast while he pulled himself along the rails. The light from his forehead and the torch followed the walls, seeking out impediments. He was so engrossed in checking the sides that it was only when he was only a few metres away from it that he discovered the iron door. It was rusted all over, with gaping holes, and hung on lopsided hinges out from the rock wall. Through one of the gaps he could see that someone had secured the hinge with a bolt. Erik shone the light over the fragile brown metal. What was that? Some kind of calcium deposit on a level with his face. He swam a little closer. No, it wasn’t calcium. It was chalk. Something had been written on the door. In large uneven letters, a word that to him was completely meaningless:

NIFLHEIMR

Niflheimr ‐ perhaps that was the name of the mine? Whatever it was, this door was closed. But perhaps… Erik put his gloved fingers against the rusty surface and gave it a cautious push. The door moved, if only slightly. He pushed again, harder, and through the water he could hear the hinges creak. He had been careful with the props, but surely this was not a load‐bearing construction? It was only a dilapidated iron door, after all. Erik took a deep intake of air from the tubes and shoved as hard as he could. With a grating sound the door swayed as the hinges came loose from their fixings in the rock. In its fall it brought with it a cloud of stones and sand and the water clouded. He must gain visibility again, be able to see, felt panic at not being able to see. He grabbed hold of the passage walls and pushed himself forward with full force. Erik had no time to see the stairs behind the iron door and his forehead slammed against the first step, ripping off his diving mask. He felt the icy water against his naked face and searched in vain for the mouthpiece which had been ripped out. He had no air. No air! He held his head up with all his strength, as if that would help – and suddenly felt that his face was above the surface of the water. Then, when he instinctively drew in air through his mouth and nose, there it was again, the stench. He had to hyperventilate to stop himself throwing up. Erik crawled up the next few steps and collapsed. Breathe through your mouth now, through your mouth… Slowly his breathing calmed down and he adapted to breathing through his mouth. It would be alright after all. He peered up at the dry passage ahead, turned over onto his back, and rested.

When, after a while, Erik tried to sit up, he noticed there was no slack in the rope attached to his belt. His lifeline up to the surface, the quickest way out, must have become wedged under the fallen door. 14

Levering himself against the edge of the top step, he tried to pull it free. It was impossible, the rope would not budge. There was no choice. He got out his titanium knife and turned the toothed side down. With a few powerful movements he sawed the rope free. Perhaps it would be fine. He would probably be able to follow the rope anyway, as he swam back out through the passages. A little voice inside him said now, immediately, this instant. But… surely, since he had come this far? He could breathe, after all, and there must be at least thirty minutes of air left in the cylinders. That would be more than enough to get him back up to the surface, surely? The vile stench made thinking difficult. Erik turned his head lamp away from the water and the stairs and had his first look into the tunnel. It led on, confined and damp, into the blackness. He stood up and began walking. The walls were cracked and uneven from the fires that had blasted the tunnel out of the rock, and now the tunnel was dividing again. He chose to turn right. Then there was another fork, but here the right‐hand tunnel was filled with stones, so it had to be the left‐hand one. Then right again, and here it divided into three, one of which was a dead end. He returned to the fork, but where was left, and which direction had he come from? All around there was the smell of decay and disintegration. “It’s the smell of corpse,” he heard himself whisper, but then rapped his torch handle hard against the wall to drive away the echo of his words. He was certain he should turn left here. Erik crouched down and moved even further into the labyrinth. He was unsure when it began, but now the icy ore was sloping sharply downwards. He must have gone at least forty, fifty metres deeper, but had still not reached the water. Perhaps the flooded areas were at different levels in different parts of the mine? His diving watch blinked to tell him he had walked for half an hour, but his body told him it must have been longer. It was getting increasingly colder, and his breath was turning to vapour, and there was less air down here than he thought. He had taken a couple of rests and opened the valve in the breathing apparatus, but even so he was getting more and more confused. The mine passage seemed to have changed, he thought. It began to look more like a natural tunnel into a cave. There were no more marks from the mine workings, only clusters of stalactites hanging down from the low roof of rock. Christ, it was freezing now, a bitter chill that penetrated even the three layers of his drysuit.

What if he never got out again? How long would it take before anyone found him? Again Erik Hall rammed his torch against the wall. The ray of light flickered, and then slowly returned. How long before anyone even missed him? No‐one knew he had come down in this shaft. And who would bother looking for him? For some reason he started to think about what he would leave behind him in the isolated cottage. The extent of his fame was three old newspaper articles he had saved. One was a few centimetres long and said that Erik Hall had scored eleven points in a basketball match in his school team. One was a photo, taken when the newspaper Kuriren had visited Dala‐El, although not much of him could be seen. And then there was the real triumph, a short quote from a national paper, Aftonbladet itself, when they had run a story one summer about the mine in Falun. All his face could be seen in that one. Oh yes, his face. Dyke Divers. Erik slowed to a halt and as his feet stopped moving he understood that this really must be the 15

end. He looked at his meter – two hundred and twelve metres down. He had reached almost fifty metres deeper than the girls. His rigid fingers pulled out the spray can and scrawled with a shaking hand a new signature on the wall: E‐W. He thought for a while and then added ‘212 metres – ad extremum’. A nice expression, even though he had seen it on TV. Ad extremum. At the end, assuming they had got the translation right. Finally he took a few pictures with his underwater camera. This time he had to keep his neoprene hood on because of the cold. When he looked at the photos in the camera screen Erik saw that his eyes were swollen and bloodshot. He might be feeling dizzy, but not enough to be unable to recognise the first sign of oxygen deficiency. He had to turn back. He let the beam from the torch sweep around the narrow walls one last time. Suddenly there was a flash. He took a step back. Once more the light was reflected back. Something metallic – another door, perhaps? Turn around, or… Yes, it was another iron door, the same as before. Same bolt too, on the inside. Same… chalk?

NÁSTRÖNDU

The thick air streamed into his lungs through his open mouth. Náströndu? Well, what did it matter what was written on the rusty metal, because he had made up his mind now. He would... He gave the door a light shove. It gave way instantly, swinging wide open on its screeching hinges. Once he had gained control of his breathing again he plucked up the courage to look hesitantly through the opening. There, on the other side, a staircase wound steeply downwards. Five more minutes. Erik set his diving watch. His rubber diving boots creaked as he crept down the stairs, one step at a time. The staircase wound a half turn as it disappeared into the darkness. At the bottom he came to a vault, opening out into… well, what would you call it? A crypt? No, a cavern. Cavern was the right word, a large natural cavern twenty metres high, at least. Water was trickling from the roof high above, a slow drip, drip into a pool, and in the middle of the pool a large boulder rose up above the surface. Resting on the boulder – what was that on top, a kind of sack? Well, in that case it couldn’t be a cavern after all, it must be yet another mine chamber with some equipment left behind. The air was thick and even breathing through his mouth Erik could not avoid the stench. Just a quick look round, and a few pictures. He moved warily but even so his feet crunched on the gravel and created an echo, crunched again and triggered another echo. He stopped, wanting the silence to return. The light from his head lamp and torch swept over the walls. To the right the copper ore glinted all the way up to the roof of the cave. And to the left? Erik started when he saw something that looked like a doorway, but when he reached out and ran his hand along the rock wall he found he had been fooled by shadows from the scores a miner had carved into the ore long ago. No doorway. This was the end. Time to turn around. He directed the light one last time to the left before … but there it was again! The same uneven chalk marks, but this time whoever had done it had taken the trouble to write more than one word. Erik could hardly make out the words in the uneven rows of text. He took out his camera.

It flashed and he looked a little doubtfully at the screen. The girls were never going to believe this. When he returned to the staircase it occurred to him that he might take back a souvenir. Something from the sack perhaps, resting over there on the boulder in the pool? That would be the easiest thing. The next moment he felt the cold as he waded out into the black water. When he finally reached the sack on the boulder the light from his head lamp revealed that it was completely covered in black and grey threads. An old net. Erik removed his gloves and tried to lift off the net. It was heavy and disgusting, disintegrating in the water. As he started to pull at the threads he caught sight of something white entangled in the net, a kind of tool, he thought. He took hold of its handle to take a closer look. It felt as if it were made of some kind of metal. The handle seemed to have fastened. He felt along the smooth metal and found it was bound twice – no three times – as if it were tied on to something. Erik opened up the concave edge of his titanium knife and cut awkwardly through the first binding. It snapped. Snapped? Was it so old it had petrified? He got hold of the second binding and cut again. There was a second sharp snap and now the whole sack started to move. Despite the icy cold Erik felt a wave of heat, like a fever, run through his body, but he had to finish the task. He cut through the third binding. Snap – it was done. When the handle came away he saw that it belonged to something he at first thought was a long white key, but when the torchlight flickered over the object he saw that it was in fact a cross. A very strange cross. It had the handle and the cross‐piece, but at the top was a round eyelet, like a head. Could there be something else under the net? Erik took hold of the tangle of threads with his bare hands and tried to push them aside to reach the contents of the sack, but the threads seemed to be sewn on. He took a firmer grip and tugged. Far too late he realised he had tugged too hard. The entire sack came away into his arms and he staggered helplessly back a few steps under its weight before it toppled him over completely. He fell backwards and his head went under the icy water of the pool. He floundered, gasping for air… Air! When at last he managed to get himself into a sitting position and could see again, the light from the head lamp fell onto someone else’s face. Paper thin skin stretched around the two staring eyes of a woman, and above her nose, in her forehead, gaped a hole as big as a coin. Then Erik’s hand nudged another hand under the water, and he felt three sawn‐off stumps. They were not bindings he had cut through. They were fingers. Instinctively Erik tried to move backwards but the head of the woman bobbed after him as if she were a doll. He pulled the body towards him again, trying to comprehend. What he had thought was a bundle of threads was in actual fact the corpse’s long hair. Then, as he happened to breathe through his nose by mistake, he took in the smell of her body through the stench. The woman smelled of blood and iron and the summer warmth of a barn wall. A smell Erik could place immediately. She smelled of Falu red paint.

1 4 E b e r l e i n

The villa’s front door opened into a wide entrance hall with low‐hanging chandeliers. The glow from the imitation candles made Don think of a cave with stalactites, but instead of rough granite the walls here were lined with in oil paintings. There was an aura of dust and National Romanticism: Zorn’s nudes at the water’s edge, Liljefors’ distant flying birds, and the main attraction, a painting by Carl Larsson, centrally placed above the grandiose marble staircase. It depicted figures in an archway, a girl with a sunshade and two flaxen‐haired children in frock‐coats, and below it the title: ‘My Loved Ones’. On a tray beneath a gilded mirror lay a few letters, stamped with the German eagle. One of the two men, the one who called himself Eberlein, had linked his arm through Don’s and was now leading him over the creaking parquet floor. It was probably his grey complexion that made Don put him in his sixties, but he was starting to doubt that now because the German moved as lithely as a cat beside him. His body was slim and wiry under his elegant suit, his thin shoulders sloped, and on his pointed nose he wore a pair of anti‐reflection glasses. The mouth below the rimless glasses was a touch too red and his lips seemed to have frozen in a self‐ absorbed smile. Ahead of them the second man, who resembled a toad more than anything else, had already reached half way up the marble staircase with Eva Ström. Don watched as the lawyer’s hand slid along the white varnished banister for the last few stairs up to the first floor balustrade. Neither of the two Security Police officers seemed to have any intention of going further into the house, and the last thing Don noticed as Eberlein led him up high enough to look down into the entrance hall was the balding one slowly lighting a cigarette.

Toad led them through a row of airy first floor rooms that could have featured in a brochure for Svenskt Tenn. Then a pine spiral staircase wound up to an unlit corridor, at the far end of which was a pair of closed double doors. Eberlein took out two minute keys, which must have been handed over to him by the balding Security Police officer. He unlocked Don’s handcuffs and gently massaged his wrists. The German’s body exuded a strong fragrance. Don heard the lilting voice close to his ear. “I hope you understand you have nothing to be worried about. This will be just a couple of friendly questions. An exchange of information, if you like.” The German touched him lightly on the arm. “This way.”

The double doors led into a vaulted library. The right hand wall was covered in shelves from ceiling to floor, with endless rows of black book spines, ending in carpeting thick enough to absorb every sound. It was like being cocooned, thought Don. In the centre, under glass lamps, stood a dark varnished table and some chairs. Eberlein indicated to Don to sit down. The chair was upholstered in green leather with brass studs, and it creaked as Don lowered himself onto it. Hunching over, he drew the bag on his knees closer to him. Then he heard

someone behind him, Toad no doubt, locking the doors. With an intake of breath which sounded slightly tense Eva Ström also took her place at the table and began shuffling her papers. “Now, this is going to be a purely informal conversation,” Eberlein began, brushing against Don’s hunched back as he walked behind him. The library cocoon seemed to close in on him and Don felt Eva Ström trying to rouse him with a little shove. When he continued to be silent, she answered for him. “We don’t understand what kind of conversation you mean.” Eberlein pulled out the chair on the opposite side of the table, adjusted his dark trouser legs and sat down. He interlocked his fingers in front of him and from behind the anti‐reflection glasses directed a pair of yellowish‐grey and very deep set eyes directly at Don. “First of all I want to welcome you to Villa Ekarne, now used by the German diplomatic mission.” “So this is an assignment for the Ambassador?” asked Eva Ström. A swift smile crossed Eberlein’s face. “The Ambassador is what you might call a good friend, but I personally didn’t arrive in Stockholm until this afternoon. And as I said, I would be grateful...” He indicated Eva Ström’s pen. “…grateful if we could keep this conversation as informal as possible.” Eva Ström hesitated momentarily, then shrugged her shoulders and put down her pen. “I’m here to ask a few questions on behalf of a foundation,” said Eberlein. “There is keen interest in Germany to have this case properly investigated for, shall we say, historical reasons.” “A German foundation receiving help from the Swedish National Security Service?” Eva Ström queried. ”Yes, for a brief meeting in all cordiality.” Eberlein smiled again, but this time the smile did not reach the rest of his greying face. “In this case we will all win if we cooperate.” “I find it hard to believe that the prosecutor in Falun knew the purpose for this visit,” said Eva Ström. “I can assure you it has all been handled correctly.” “If this is about Erik Hall’s death...” “It’s not only about that,” said Eberlein. “I’m more interested in finding out exactly what Erik Hall brought out of that cave with him.” There was a magnetism in the German’s eyes behind his glasses which made it difficult for Don to look away. “Did Erik Hall mention a document to either of you, or an object he had found down in the mine, apart from the missing cross?” “He has...” Eva Ström began, but was interrupted by a croaking sound. Don swallowed, annoyed, and tried to control his voice. “And how would that knowledge be of benefit you?” “That, Herr Titelman, is a very long story.” A cough made Eberlein cast a sidelong glance towards Toad, who had seated himself on a stool with his back leaning against one of the bookshelves. “Far too long,” Eberlein repeated. He seemed to be waiting, but when Don said nothing more, he tried again: “The thing is, the cross that Erik Hall found purely by chance is an object we have good reason to believe belongs to us. You could say that everything that was in that mine is a clue in a historical riddle which the foundation has spent many years trying to solve. Now Erik Hall happens to have left us and you seem to be the only one who can take this further.” 19

“I find it very hard to understand why you think I should be able to help you,” said Don. There was an irritated intake of air from Toad in the gloom. “I only met Erik Hall once,” continued Don, his voice hoarse. “And the only object I know anything about is that cross. Otherwise all I know is what I’ve read in the newspapers.” “It’s a shame to have to begin the conversation this way,” said Eberlein. “Oh?” said Don. “Yes, because as far as I can see, you are not telling the truth,” said the German. Don fidgeted in his chair, pretending to straighten his jacket. “Well, let’s start again. As I understand it you had long telephone conversations with Erik Hall the week before he died, and we’ve found entries on Wall’s hard drive saying he had found at least some kind of document down there in the mine, and that he’d mentioned it to you.” “I’m not sure about that,” said Don. “We have also found out that Erik Hall talked about some kind of ‘secret’ he brought out of the mine with him. Whether that refers to the document or some other object, we don’t know.” “Something else apart from the cross?” It was the lawyer’s voice. “That’s what we have travelled here today to clarify,” said Eberlein. Don directed a glance at Toad, who was sitting with his wide face tilted upwards, looking at the ceiling. Then he heard Eberlein’s voice again: “Did Erik Hall mention anything to you about an object in the shape of a star, or an area north of Svalbard?” Don felt himself shaking his head. “And no other documents?” “No, I’ve told you…” “So what did you talk about?” “He only ever phoned late at night,” said Don. “He was drunk and wanted to talk about the cross and insisted I come and have a look.” “Now, I’m going to ask you to think about this very carefully,” said Eberlein. “What might seem absolutely meaningless to you could be of major interest to us. The slightest lead...” Don succeeded in avoiding the German’s gaze by looking down at his lips instead. They were somehow too red to go with the rest of his face. “Like I said, nothing.” Eberlein cracked the fingers of one hand and Toad stood up clumsily. He waddled up to the table. In his hand he held a piece of paper with faded blue handwriting. “Does this remind you of anything?” The scrawling loops were made by the same person who had written the post card in Don’s pocket. “No,” said Don. He tried to shrug his shoulders but they felt suddenly heavier. His lawyer interrupted: “I find it very hard to see any point in continuing with this. It’s absolutely clear my client knows nothing, and moreover is not interested in talking to you. A conversation, you said – this is what in this country we call an interrogation. Now you must see to it that the police officers take us back to Falun immediately”. The lawyer pushed back her chair and stood up. “Moreover Eberlein, or whatever your name is, a large part of what you have just put to my client is protected by preliminary investigation confidentiality. I cannot understand what the Swedish police are thinking of, allowing outsiders access to this type of information.” 20

Don also stood up but noticed that Eberlein remained seated at the table, his head down. It seemed as if the German was contemplating something. After a long time he once again turned his gaze towards Don. “You know, I think your lawyer is right.” “You do?” said Don. “Yes, she is absolutely right that this is not an interrogation.” The self‐absorbed smile spread again, red lips, grey teeth, and with a couple of easy paces Eberlein walked around the table and lay a hand on Don’s shoulder. “This is not an interrogation, and what’s more I have the greatest understanding for your unwillingness to tell us anything, the situation you’re in. But since you seem to be the last link...” The German ran his fingers distractedly over the corduroy fabric, as if he were weighing up a final decision. “Since you appear to be the last link to Erik Hall and his discovery, we can take our time and look at it another way, to see if we can have a little more confidence in each other. I’ll tell you a story, and you can help me with the ending.” “How do you mean?” ”We’ll sort that out when we get there. You’ll see.” Eberlein patted Don’s arm and said in a slightly lower voice: “I believe you, as a researcher, will fairly soon be as interested as I am in trying to find an answer to this riddle. When you’ve seen it in the right light, I mean.”

After Eberlein had made Don and Eva sit down again, he walked across to Toad by the bookcase. He crouched down and whispered something. Toad stood up with an unhappy grunt and disappeared out of the room. “Just wait a while,” said Eberlein, smiling at Don again. “I believe you’ll think it’s worth the trouble.”

1 6 S t r i n d b e r g

Dusk was falling and with the approaching darkness a drizzle came in over the green roof tiles on the hill, enveloping the tops of the oak trees and Skansen’s craggy outcrops in a cloak of damp, but inside the windowless heart of the house, the crypt‐like library, it was impossible to tell day from night. A warm glow from the glass lamps fell across the table and the only sound was the slow drumming of Eberlein’s fingers on the lid of a sturdy metal box. Between the German’s manicured nails Don could just make out the words on the riveted label:

Strindberg 1895 – 97

Toad, who had just brought in the steel box, had taken his place again on the stool over by the bookcases, and his face was half hidden in the gloom. At Don’s side Eva Ström leaned back in her chair, her arms and legs folded, her mouth a tight line. The fingers stopped drumming and Eberlein broke the silence. “Well now, to help you see this in the right light, may I start with a question? Have you heard of the Taklamakan Desert?” There was a sigh from Toad in the corner. “The Taklamakan Desert,” Eberlein went on, ignoring Toad, “is an ocean of sand which stretches from the roof of the world, the Pamir Mountains, three hundred thousand square kilometres into north‐west China. Arctic in winter, and when summer finally arrives the sand turns into a furnace, with a heat that can exceed fifty degrees. Hell on earth, they say. It is, at any rate, impossible to live there, and until the end of the 1800s the area was marked on maps as a white patch, a terra incognita, as big as Germany. At that time no‐one knew anything about its interior, not even those who lived near the Desert. The only information available was a few lines in a manuscript Marco Polo left behind in the 1400s, fantastic stories of ancient cities buried under sand dunes hundreds of metres high. The first person who dared to set off into this void came from a backwater in northern Europe. His name was Sven Hedin. There was a creak as Don changed position in his chair. “You know about Sven Hedin’s journeys, I suppose?” said Eberlein. “I profess to a deep and indelible memory of Adolf Hitler and consider him to be one of world history’s greatest men,” said Don. Toad could be heard muttering, but Don only shrugged his hunched shoulders and continued. “That was what Sven Hedin wrote about Hitler at the end of the war. ‘I profess to a deep and indelible memory of Adolf Hitler and consider him to be one of world history’s greatest men.’ He was knighted – Hedin, that is.” “Well, where Hedin stood politically has nothing to do with this, I can assure you,” said Eberlein. The German pushed the steel box aside and leaned across the table. “No, this is about something that took place long, long before the war, when Hedin was about thirty and still a young explorer. At the beginning of 1895 he stood on the fringe of the Taklamakan Desert, and to get there he had travelled by rail from St Petersburg to Tashkent in Russian Turkestan. From there he crossed the frozen steppes in a fur‐lined horse drawn wagon, 22

to continue on foot with Kyrgyzstan nomads through the Pamir mountain passes at heights of five to six thousand meters. That alone was, for its time, a truly remarkable journey. On the fifth of January 1895 he finally reached the oasis town of Kashgar, the place by the Taklamakan Desert where for thousands of years the Silk Roads caravans had converged. With his one‐man tent, his tools and his weapons he disappeared out into the sea of sand on the twenty‐second of January, with a couple of camels, some bearers and donkeys. He knew nothing then about the violent sand storms and the whirling sands which can redraw the desert in a matter of hours. Neither had he listened to the warnings he had heard in Kashgar about the strange voices out in the emptiness, voices that bewitched and made travellers lose their way in the labyrinth that was the Desert. The first and second nights went as planned, and when the group set up camp under the stars Hedin made charcoal sketches of the terrain so he would not lose his direction. But on the third night the sand storms came. According to Hedin’s description it raged for a full seventy‐seven hours. When the sand finally settled the entire landscape around their camp had been transformed. The storm had not only moved the sand dunes, which had been several hundred metres high, the winds had actually flattened them, and where the sand had once been, petrified trees now spread their branches to the sky. As he wandered among the tree trunks Hedin discovered some white posts protruding from the sand, and as he got closer he saw that he was standing beside the remains of a fence. Accompanied by a bearer he followed the line of the fence in a westerly direction and after a few kilometres they reached a cluster of derelict buildings, the remains of a town. The strong winds had swept them clean of the layers of sand that had covered them for hundreds, maybe thousands, of years. Hedin wrote later that his servant begged him to leave the place, which they called the Ivory Houses, but Hedin himself danced for joy and was convinced he had discovered a new Pompeii. In some of his first notes Hedin wrote that the buildings seemed to be constructed of wood, poplar in particular, right in the middle of a sea of sand! Although the white facades at first felt solid, they shattered like glass when he tapped them with his riding whip. Hedin also painted a number of pictures depicting frescoes of naked, praying women, with what Hedin interpreted as an Indian caste mark on their foreheads, and men holding strange weapons, and beside them figures of Buddha holding a lotus blossom. Hedin came to the conclusion that he had found what once had been a temple place. Today we know it as the buried city of Dandan‐Uiliq. However, what is less known,” Eberlein went on, “is what Hedin found that first day under the buried city. In a letter, which we have access to, Hedin describes dramatically how by chance his feet broke through the floor of one of the most magnificent buildings and sent him hurtling down onto the mosaic floor of something he thought must be a much older burial chamber. He never succeeded in dating it. Around the mosaic’s green and black centre lay twelve swaddled bodies, preserved mummies that had long since desiccated in the desert air. As he approached them he found a cross on the chest of one of the mummies, as white as bone and shaped like the hieroglyph known as Ankh. And horizontally over the cross someone had once placed another object, a five‐pointed star in the shape the Egyptians called Seba, which they saw as the symbol of the god Osiris, ruler of the outermost periphery, the god who holds the keys to the underworld itself.” Eberlein fell silent and studied Don for a long time as if hunting for answers. “Ver volt dos gegleybt?” said Don eventually. Eberlein looked at him steadily. “ I mean, a star and a cross in a sunken burial chamber under a buried city...” Don’s eyes stung. Twenty‐four hours without sleep. “Ver volt dos gegleybt. Who would have thought it?” Eberlein gave a faint smile. 23

“You must understand,” he said, “Sven Hedin never even tried to convince anyone about his discovery of the cross and the star in the burial chamber under Dandan‐Uiliq. He was of the opinion, until his death, that the whole story was an embarrassment. You wouldn’t willingly tell people about a sensational discovery which you later seem to have... lost.” He coughed, took a handkerchief out of his jacket pocket and dried his lips. “Very dry air in here, isn’t it? Perhaps you’d like something to drink?” Eva Ström’s face showed no reaction, but Don nodded. The German turned towards Toad who rose out of the dark corner, muttering. When he had lurched out into the corridor, one of the library’s doors was left slightly open and Don could make out the red rays of the sunset in a window beyond the corridor and the spiral staircase. Then he heard Eberlein’s voice again. “We know that Hedin took the cross and the star back with him to the oasis at Kashgar, because there’s an entry on his inventory of the excavations. What happened next can probably be put down to Hedin’s personality. He was obsessive about writing the correct description himself of every object he discovered before he packed them into crates to be sent to the scientific academies in Stockholm. But this proved to be impossible with the cross and the star. Despite a few primitive attempts he couldn’t even find out what the objects were made of. To hide this failure from his colleagues, he sought advice from a number of acquaintances, who were living in France at the time. He put the cross and the star in a sealed brass case, together with a letter describing his discovery and requesting a technical opinion. The consignment is noted in Hedin’s effects and as far as we have been able to tell went from Kashgar to the St. Louis Hospital in Paris, arriving there on the second of February 1895. The hands that broke the seals of the case were wrapped in strips of linen and smeared in salve to soothe the sores caused by long nights of alchemy experiments. They were hands that for a month had hardly been able to hold even a pen.” In the gentle glow from the glass lamps Eberlein’s face seemed to have grown younger. The greyness had disappeared and it was as if he was waiting for Don to say the name. “Strindberg?” He gave a nod. Don tried to hold back but could not stop himself and let out a hoarse, hacking laugh. It was immediately absorbed by the thick carpet and the insulating spines of the books. The German kept his eyes fixed on Don and continued. “It might seem an incredible coincidence but you have to understand that the Swedish upper class at that time was a very small circle, and Hedin knew that Strindberg had access to the analytical laboratory at the Sorbonne, with some of Europe’s most advanced technical equipment.” Don cast a sideways look at Eva, but she only rolled her eyes towards the ceiling, so he turned back to face Eberlein, and said, “But the very thought that Sven Hedin of all people would send something to August Strindberg...” “Well?” asked Eberlein. “You do know they were deadly enemies?” “Oh, that enmity came later!” said Eberlein. “It might be connected to the way Strindberg treated both the Hedin objects, but no, until 1895 they had a good relationship with each other.” Eberlein smiled again.

The sun must have set for the light in the library vault hardly changed when the doors swung open and Toad came back in. He slapped the tray down on the table. A silver teapot, three gold‐ edged cups on green saucers and beside them a neat pile of white cotton material, which after a 24

moment Don realised were in fact several pairs of thin gloves. Eberlein stood up and walked round the table. There were clinking sounds as he neatly arranged the cups and poured the tea. The steam from the cups spread a relaxing aroma of poppy and cinnamon, and Don furtively dipped his hand into his bag, looking for two tablets of reviving amphetamine. The German lifted the rim of his cup to his red mouth meditatively. “Well, whichever it was,” said Eberlein, when he had taken a sip, “Strindberg’s attempts with the cross and the star were lamentable. When it comes down to it, he was something of a charlatan, a poet‐chemist, as he himself wanted to be known, but when it came to determining the origins and characteristics of a substance, his knowledge was far too superficial. Also, Strindberg was going through a rather deceitful, unscrupulous, phase and after months of failed attempts he tired of ‘Hedin’s desert things’ as he called them. But because he didn’t want to admit that his attempts had gone badly, he sent a short explanation in which he lied and said that the cross and the star had quite simply been lost, left behind in the Café du Cardinal in the fifth arrondissement. Naturally, Sven Hedin was furious, but he could hardly do anything about the situation from where he was in the central Asian wilderness.” Eberlein leaned across the table, ran his nails over the steel box and down the back, where some kind of catch clicked. “No, August Strindberg never got anywhere with the cross and the star.” Then he released two more clips at the upper edge of each side and lifted the lid. “Anyone wanting to get to the bottom of a story loves a collector, isn’t that true, Titelman?” Eberlein stood with his hand on the back of his chair, and looked down at the contents of the box. ”Yes, we love people like August Strindberg, who are so convinced of their own importance that they date laundry lists and shopping lists, and even the smallest imperfect sketch to be saved for posterity. It’s said that more than ten thousand letters sent to Nietzsche, Georg Brandes and Ibsen have been preserved, not to mention the letters Strindberg sent in the 1860s to his cousin Johan Oskar, or Occa, as the family called him. Their friendship was so close that August eventually became godfather to Occa’s son, Nils. Now, at that very time, the early spring of 1895, it just so happened that this Nils Strindberg was one of the country’s most promising young physicists and chemists. We know that Occa mentioned his son’s findings about electrical resonance in a letter dated the seventh of February 1895, and that Strindberg only a week or two later sent a list of questions about physics directly to Nils’ address at Stockholm’s University College. Nils wrote a detailed reply which has also been preserved, together with a further dozen or so letters, because for that entire spring he became something of Strindberg’s confidante in his experiments with alchemy. Eventually the tone became more personal, and in one of the last letters, dated June 1895, Nils complains about the melancholy of the deserted summer Stockholm, when all scientific work had been set aside. In reply he received a package from his godfather in Paris which contained two items: a cross with an eyelet at the top, and a five‐ pointed Egyptian‐style star.” There was a clatter as Eberlein replaced his cup. Then he sat down again at the table opposite Eva and Don, pulled the steel box closer, and slowly to pull on a pair of cotton gloves. “What I intend to show you now is something we brought with us as an example of the type of thing Erik Hall discovered in the mine. But I have a feeling can serve another purpose.” Eberlein brought his hands together and stretched the white fabric between the fingers of the gloves. “In the note Strindberg sent with the package he didn’t mention a word about Sven Hedin or the Taklamakan Desert. All he wrote were a few short lines inviting a careful analysis of the 25

cross and the star and the request for a quick reply. Nils was interested in photography, so the first thing he did when he examined the objects...” From the metal box Eberlein lifted out rectangular carton made of cardboard. He put it down on the table and untied the string so that he could open the lid. At the top was a layer of greyish wadding, which Eberlein removed and spread out in front of them. Then he put his hand back into the carton again and brought out some fragile glass slides, which he carefully began to place on the soft layer. Don leaned forward to able to see. It was difficult at first, with all the light reflecting in the dark glass, but when Eberlein shaded them with his hand there was no longer any room for doubt. On the oxidised silver of the glass plates shone a white looped cross, and beside the cross lay a faintly shining star with five arms radiating from its centre. Beside the objects someone had placed a ruler, and Don could read that the cross measured 42.6 centimetres long, with a crosspiece of 21.3 centimetres. On one of the other pictures was a handwritten note saying that the Seba star measured 11 centimetres in diameter. “It feels different when you see it, doesn’t it?” said Eberlein. Now Eva was also leaning over the table. She took hold of the grey wadding, pulled the glass slides closer and regarded them. Eberlein shook free another pair of thin gloves from the pile and reached over. She put them on, then lifted up and studied the delicate glass. “A collodion negative,” said Eberlein, after she had looked at them for a while. “The solution consists of cotton dissolved in ether, and a ten minute exposure. Very sharp image, don’t you think?” Don met the reflection of Eva’s eyes in the dark shard.

When Eberlein lifted out the next layer of wadding, a bundle of yellowing sheets of note paper could be seen at the bottom of the carton. They appeared to be bound together with wire, and on the top page was stamped:

Stockholm University College – Berzelius laboratory

Following the stamp were rows of numerals and abbreviations, untidily written in dark blue ink. The German placed the bundle of papers on the table, beside the glass plates. Then he untwisted the wire, freed the first page and gave it to Don, together with a couple of white gloves. “From the attempt in mid June, 1895,” said Eberlein. Don could make out the occasional chemical notation, but the remainder of the text was a blur of spidery hand writing. “Arend’s system of stenography,” said Eberlein. “Nils Strindberg always used shorthand i when he worked alone in the laboratory, and what you are looking at concerns some of the early attempts with acids. He tried later to influence the metal’s surface with the help of chemicals, too, but had no success there, either.” Eberlein shifted a few sheets of paper to the side. “This is from later that same night, when he had begun to examine the inscriptions on the cross. Nils Strindberg used a magnifying glass and a microscope, but the notes here are fairly confusing because he could not explain how someone had managed to etch anything onto the cross. He was completely unable to make any mark on the object at all, not even when he used one of the Berzelius laboratory’s diamond‐tipped brads for testing hardness. The weight astonished him, too.” Eberlein indicated a column of crossed‐out numerals. 26

“The laboratory scales gave the cross and the star readings of only a couple of grams, while the ones in his hand seemed to weigh so much more.” He turned over a few more pages. “A few days later he began to ask himself whether the objects were actually made of metal at all. Certainly, they reflected the light that fell on them, and there was a metallic shine, but whatever he did he could not get the cross or the star to conduct electricity or heat. Nils Strindberg tried to heat the objects one at a time on the mesh screen of his Bunsen burner, but not even at a temperature of 1,500 degrees did they seem to be affected by the heat. Neither did he need to use tongs to take them off the flame, for he described that even after half an hour’s heating the objects were still cool, almost cold to the touch. Finally, on the twenty‐seventh of June, he made a breakthrough.” Eberlein’s gloved fingers searched further down the pile and at last he seemed to find what he was looking for, and moved the other pages aside. The annotations that now lay before them were very different from the previous ones, and included rough sketches, clearly written down in great haste. In several places the ink had formed dark blue blots. “You see,” said Eberlein, “the Bunsen burner at the Berzelius laboratory has a maximum temperature of about 1,500 degrees, but on the evening of the twenty‐seventh of June Nils Strindberg had attached a container of pure oxygen to the air inlet to see if he could force the temperature up even further. In a moment of negligence, or even pure laziness, for the first time he heated up both objects at the same time, with the star resting on the horizontal arm of the cross. The instant before he adjusted the gas to turn the flame from blue to white the two objects fused together, completely unexpectedly. The temperature at that time had only reached...” “1,220 degrees,” said Eva Ström. She pointed at the figure beside an exclamation mark. “At 1,220 degrees,” nodded Eberlein, “in the flame on the Bunsen burner’s mesh screen the objects fused together. Nils Strindberg writes that it was as if the star suddenly settled into place, seamlessly attaching itself to the horizontal arm of the cross, as if both objects were in fact two parts of something that was once a complete whole. And yet at his earlier attempts the star and the cross had been entirely insensitive to heat. Don felt a wave wash through him. The amphetamines must have kicked in at last. The rapidly increased wakefulness made his mouth dry. “You can see for yourself,” said Eberlein, indicating one of the drawings. In the middle of the sketched cross there were indeed five thin lines, the arms of a star that had fused under the loop of the cross, at the place where the two arms met. Beside the picture was a vertical note, written in pencil. Don turned the page round and read:

At the intersection the navigational instrument becomes fluid like mercury

Don looked up at Eberlein. “Navigational instrument?” He looked down again at the fused cross and star that Nils Strindberg had so hastily sketched at various angles across the page. At the foot of the page was a variant where the ink had run into a smudged half moon, like a domed crown of rays above the prone object. “He managed to portray the reaction better on the next page,” said Eberlein, and turned the page over. Here, Nils Strindberg had taken the time to make two considerably larger and more detailed drawings. Above both of them, what Don had interpreted as an ink blot had been sketched as a grey‐blue 27

sphere, arching over the joined cross and star like a lofty cupola. On the upper side of the sphere seven points were set out in a familiar pattern, and beside the highest point was another pencilled note.

Northern Pole Star in the Dragon’s Wing

“Dragon’s wing,” said Eberlein. “Nils Strindberg used this name for the constellation we now call Ursa Minor, or Little Bear.” Then his finger traced the seven points on the sphere above the cross and the star, from the Great Bear’s square up to its tail. “First the twin stars Pherkad and Kandab were illuminated. This one is called Anwar al Farkadain, and this is Ahfa al Farkadain. Then come Urodelus and Yildun, and here at the top is Polaris, the Pole Star, or the northern pole star, as Nils Strindberg calls it ‐ the star that always remains fixed in the zenith over the North Pole. Eberlein sat silently for a while as he studied the drawing. Then he said: “According to Strindberg’s notes, the pattern of these seven points appeared out of thin air just above the cross and the star, almost immediately after the objects had fused together for the first time. Initially he thought they were some rogue sparks from the Bunsen burner and couldn’t understand why they remained floating there. Then, after a minute or two, the constellation welded itself into this first celestial sphere that he has drawn above the cross and the star. He wrote later that it was like seeing a halo growing out of nothing.” “The first sphere?” said Don. Eberlein nodded towards the lower drawing.

Don licked his dry lips and slowly redirected his gaze. There, in the next picture, was another sphere. Under the firmament with the Great Bear, Nils Strindberg had drawn a second semi‐ circle above the cross and the star, a blurry grey inner dome, covered in contours which could hardly be misinterpreted. “He’s drawn the northern hemisphere?” asked Don. “He has drawn the second sphere,” said Eberlein. The German followed the outlines of the land masses with his white‐gloved finger. “The Siberian coast at the Arctic Ocean. The Kola Peninsula. The fjords of northern Norway. Iceland, Svalbard and the Shetland Islands. The head of the glaciers in Greenland and Newfoundland. The Canadian north coast and the tundra in Alaska at the Bering Strait. And here... The finger moved back to the middle of the lower sphere. “The North Pole” “Well, in that case, what’s that?” asked Eva. From the Pole Star a thin line ran towards a point a few centimetres below Eberlein’s finger. “That,” said Eberlein, “is a beam of light. At the end of the reaction it shone from the Pole Star towards the Northern Hemisphere, and apparently Nils Strindberg instantly concluded that it was a kind of signpost.”

Don carefully lifted the yellowed sheet of laboratory paper closer to the glass lamps. The ray which emanated from the Pole Star ended in a small X just north of the outline that Eberlein had called Svalbard. But now, in the stronger light, Don saw that in actual fact there were several small Xs in this particular region, drawn in pencil and meticulously numbered. They seemed connected to a list in the right hand margin:

(pos. no 1) 29/6 lat. 82°59'N, long. 29°40'E (pos. no 2) 30/6 lat. 83°15'N, long. 30°13'E ! (pos. no 3) 1/7 unchanged (pos. no 4) 2/7 unchanged! (pos. no 5) 3/7 lat. 82°51'N, long. 30°05'E !! (pos. no 6) 4/7 unchanged!!!

“After several attempts Nils Strindberg succeeded with surprising accuracy in calculating where the tip of the beam pointed,” said Eberlein when Don looked up. “As you see, right from the beginning there were small but regular position changes, and it took a long time before he could work out any kind of pattern.” The German flipped over a few pages of ever increasingly detailed drawings of the celestial sphere, the semicircle and the ray, until he arrived at a carefully detailed table. He followed the dates and positions with his finger: “This is, as far as we know, the first proper table Nils Strindberg made of the ray’s movements. It was at the beginning of August 1895 and by this time he must have learnt to draw quickly, because the reaction with the sphere lasted for only ten minutes or so at each attempt. After that the cross and the star fell apart again in two cool, perfectly formed objects, and it was as if the fusion of the two had never happened.” Eberlein let the table lay where it was in front of them, while he began to gather up the glass plates on the grey wadding. “As you can see,” he continued, his head down as he busied himself with the glass, “what we have here are fifty or so attempts in which the sequence of events is always the same. Nils Strindberg placed the star on the horizontal arm of the cross on the mesh of the Bunsen burner and adjusted the flame to the right temperature. When the cross and the star welded together into a single instrument the seven points always began to shine, and at every attempt they formed the pattern of the Great Bear, with the Pole Star at the zenith above the fused star in the centre of the cross. Then after a minute or so, the celestial sphere became apparent, followed by the semi circle of the Northern Hemisphere. And the last step of the reaction was always the bright, narrow ray that fell from the Pole Star to a point close to latitude 84, north of Svalbard and Spetsbergen. If you look there in the list, you’ll see that the distance between the shifting positions is small, within a radius of about a hundred and twenty kilometres, in fact. Nils Strindberg finally came to the conclusion that the position change was a regular occurrence and that the ray moved approximately every third day. It was almost as if it was following some kind of objective within this limited area north of Svalbard. A target, constantly on the move.” Eberlein folded the wadding around the glass plates, then lay them gently back in their carton. “Ver volt dos gegleybt,” said Don, quietly.

1 8 T h e E a g l e

A metal box and a pile of yellowing papers. On green leather chairs with brass fittings three seated figures leaning over a table. High above them arched the library’s vaulted ceiling, the turret room of the early twentieth‐century villa on Djurgården in Stockholm. Against the lower rows of black volumes that covered the walls sat a man resembling a toad. It looked as if he had fallen asleep on his stool, but the sullen set of his mouth made it obvious he was still listening.

The last sheet of Nils Strindberg’s laboratory notes was made up of several separate pages and when Eberlein unfolded it over the table in front of Eva and Don, it covered most of the surface under the glass lamps. As with the previous drawings, a high celestial sphere arched above the cross and the star, with the Great Bear constellation at its centre, but here, below the stars, the northern hemisphere had now been drawn with minute precision. From the first hurried sketch, where the contours of the coastlines were hardly discernable, Nils Strindberg had advanced to a detailed chart with the Prime Meridian running in a straight line from Greenwich in London up towards the Arctic and the North Pole. East of this centre line a bow‐shaped grid fanned out towards Svalbard and Spetsbergen, and just north of the islands was a shaded circle with the annotation

each 3rd day new ray position + recurring continuously within the circle: lat. 82°15'N – 84°20'N long. 29°20'E – 31°25'E radius of the area (approx.) 65 nautical miles = 120 km

“There are some,” said Eberlein, “who suggest Nils Strindberg contacted engineer Andrée as early as the middle of July 1895, but the first time this chart is mentioned is in the memorandum from their first meeting in Gränna at the beginning of August. And as you see, the young physicist was by this time convinced that the beam moved only within a radius of 120 kilometres. Whatever the Pole Star was pointing out, the target lay directly north of Svalbard and should theoretically be possible to reach via a short aerial trip over the ice.” Don rested his head in his hands as he sat bent forward, looking down at the patched drawing. Beside the upper tip of Svalbard’s coast stood some faded lines, written in a more pedantic hand writing than Strindberg’s, which began with the words:

Strong north easterly winds?

“We don’t know what Andrée thought about this first meeting with the twenty‐two year old physicist from Stockholm, his chart and his Bunsen burner, but Nils Strindberg describes it as a disappointment.” With his finger Eberlein gently flattened a fold in the paper that had formed along the contours of the Channel, and continued: “Nils Strindberg thought, of course, that Andrée was serious about his talk of a balloon trip over the North Pole. And to start with that did seem to be the case. Over a light lunch in his home on

that August day, Andrée spoke about the Arctic’s perfect flying conditions, about the midnight sun whose light would make the navigation easier, and how the journey in the gondola under the balloon would be warm and pleasant. He described the system of drag ropes and sails which would be used to steer the balloon, and the mild summer weather they could expect. Naturally, Nils Strindberg knew about the engineer’s plans ‐ the newspapers wrote about nothing else at the time, and that was why he had come to Gränna, of course. But after the meeting he wrote in his notes that Andrée’s enthusiasm seemed to wane the longer the lunch continued and that after a while conversation ground to a halt. When at last Strindberg set up his equipment to demonstrate the reaction with the Bunsen burner, Andrée remarked that he wasn’t particularly interested in antiques and works of art, and at first he dismissed the celestial spheres as a trick. Then he began to blame a lack of funds. Andrée had insisted to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences that the entire expedition would cost only 130,000 Swedish kronor, when in fact that amount would not even cover the purchase of the balloon. Now he admitted that he had painted rather too pretty a picture of the project, to encourage Oscar II and Alfred Nobel to contribute with donations. When the coffee arrived, with cognac and cigars, it was obvious to Nils Strindberg that Andrée’s North Pole plans had been a charade and a publicity stunt. It was also something of a shock to him that Andrée had flown in a balloon only nine times in total, and that most of the trips had ended in a crash landing. Andrée still complained about back pain following a landing on the island of Gotland earlier that spring, where the wind had driven him from Gothenburg.

To make room for the patched chart, Eberlein had pushed the steel box to the outer edge of the table. Now he lifted it back and placed it carefully in front of him, parallel with the outlines of Normandy and Brittany. Don looked at Eva when the German again loosened the catches of the box. She angled her wrist towards him, showing him her watch, and he noticed the slight shake of her head. “The only reason the expedition took place was because of Nils Strindberg,” continued Eberlein. “In a letter dated the seventeenth of August, he asked his father Occa how he could procure a large sum of money to realise Andrée’s project. Occa, who was a wholesaler, specialising in trade with Hamburg and Berlin, advised strongly against the project initially, but eventually put him in touch with a group of German businessmen. On the third of September 1895 Nils Strindberg and Andrée stepped off the train at Bahnhof Berlin Zoologischer Garten and after a demonstration with the Bunsen burner and the celestial spheres they succeeded in convincing the Germans to cover the costs of the entire project, a sum of two million kronor. This was a time when interest in Egyptology was at fever pitch and the Germans were no doubt inspired by the sensational find some Englishmen had made in the Valley of the Kings. To put it simply, the financiers hoped Strindberg’s instrument would lead them to undiscovered treasure. Eberlein smiled to himself, and continued: “There were a number of conditions, however. Firstly, the businessmen demanded that the main purpose of the balloon trip would be to investigate the area indicated by the Pole Star above Svalbard. If, subsequently, they happened to pass the North Pole, that was of less interest. The second condition was that their involvement was not to be made known to the Swedish sponsors, because they did not want to put their weapons industry contacts with the Swedish Nobel company at risk. They assumed, and not entirely without reason, that Alfred Nobel would react if he found out that the German interests tried to distort Andrée’s North Pole expedition. The third and last condition was that all information about the Bunsen burner, the cross and star, and any potential discoveries in the specified area, was to be kept secret, and be held in 32

perpetuity by a foundation with its base Nordrhein‐Westfalen. Engineer Andrée at first refused to sign the document, but was eventually persuaded by Nils Strindberg.”

Don watched as Eberlein opened the lid of the box and lifted out a small book covered in some kind of green‐checked, shiny material, like oilcloth. Inside the covers the pages seemed warped and uneven, as if they had been exposed to a great deal of damp. “On the thirtieth of May 1897, after two years of preparation, the expedition’s vessel headed towards Svalbard and the rocks of Danes’ Island through decaying, broken ice. I don’t know if you have seen the photographs, but they seem pretty unprepared, Andrée and Strindberg, as they stand there side by side on the deck of the gunboat Svensksund. Two slender men with golden watches and suits, hands inside their jacket lapels. The only person in the expedition to have any experience of arctic conditions was Knut Frænkel, who Andrée had begged to accompany them because of his physical prowess. The plan was for Frænkel to pull the sledge with its two hundred kilo load, if against all probability they were to crash land some distance from their goal. For five weeks they waited for the right winds. Nils Strindberg passed the time playing the violin and writing letters to his fiancée, Anna Charlier, while the sailors from the Svensksund varnished and water‐proofed the balloon material. Andrée and Strindberg had ordered the balloon from Lachambre in Paris, but there had been no time for a test flight. On the eleventh of July, however, the right winds finally arrived, blowing to the north‐east.” Eberlein opened the green‐checked book with its oil cloth cover. Don recognised Nils Strindberg’s handwriting, here in normal script rather than Arend’s stenography. “This is Nils Strindberg’s travel journal, begun at lunchtime immediately before departure.”

The first page was damaged, a thin scrap that Eberlein carefully turned. At the top of the following page were the annotations:

Danes’ Island, Virgo Harbour. 11 July 1897 written in the lee of the wind, north side of the balloon hangar

A sketch showed that Nils Strindberg must have lit the Bunsen burner a final time and fused the cross and the star to determine the ray’s position. Below was a smudged note in ink:

1h27 p.m. Greenw.time present position of ray: lat. 83°59'N – lat. 30°45'E estimated distance fr. Danes’ Island: 567 kilometres wind according to Frænkel: 7 sec.m. NE, decidely squally

Beside the distance markings, written in looped handwriting, was the word ‘certified’ followed by a large A. A few drops of water must have fallen on the page at the time of writing, for the words covering the rest of the page were faint and almost washed away, and all Don could make out were some remarks about the balloon’s lifting power and its notable

fragility

Then Eberlein’s voice came from the other side of the table: “The top of the balloon hangar had been dismantled, Andrée and Frænkel had already taken their place in the balloon gondola and the homing pigeons in their wicker cages were securely attached under the support ropes, and yet there were these final doubts. As far as the launch was concerned, we have to rely on eye‐witness accounts ‐ Strindberg nodding to Andrée to give the 33

order to cut the tethering ropes, and the three sharp cracks as the ropes were severed. The balloon hovered motionless for a moment or two, but when Frænkel hoisted the three sails the floor of the hangar dropped away beneath them, and they floated, weightless. As soon as they were level with the top of the hangar, the wind took hold and the balloon bumped one more time against the wall before rising slowly to a height of fifty metres and floating out over Danes’ Island and Virgo Harbour. They had waited until the launch to christen the balloon. The backers had demanded the German‐sounding name ‘Eagle’, but Strindberg and Andrée had assured Alfred Nobel that it would be called ‘Le pôle Nord’, the North Pole.

Eberlein turned over a few pages in Strindberg’s oilcloth‐covered book. The next reading was:

3 hrs 33 p.m. Greenw.time Eagle beyond the Danish Strait

Don noticed some weather reports at the top of the page, followed by a few words about beer and sandwiches, a sketch of birds alongside the gondola, and a note that Andrée had stood up on the rim to urinate. There was also a brief note about a final greeting to his fiancée Anna, which was sealed and thrown overboard as they passed over the island of Vogelsang. And then two words:

Frænkel knows!

Don looked up at Eberlein. “The Frænkel business was a surprise to Strindberg. All the calculations had been made in Andrée’s cabin onboard Svensksund, and the burner had been smuggled aboard immediately before departure in a sack made of sailcloth, together with the cross and the star. The plan was for Knut Frænkel, along with all Swedes, to be excluded from the secret, but somehow he must have found out about the existence of the instrument. Strindberg seems to have suspected Andrée. There are a few lines about that further on...” Eberlein’s finger moved over some blurred words a short way down the page. “It’s remarkable, really,” he continued, “that Nils Strindberg had the energy to devote to the matter. The balloon flight was already by this time a catastrophe. After they had passed the harbour a squall of wind caught the sail and forced the balloon down towards the waves. They dropped so low that the basket bounced against the surface of the water, and when Andrée and Strindberg finally managed to cut loose nine of their sand bags they started to ascend, but the balloon had made a half turn on its axel and began to float backwards. This spinning movement made several of the heavy drag ropes detach from their screw holds and the ropes were left behind among the stones on the water’s edge. But instead of calling off the expedition it appears that Andrée and Strindberg were so gripped by panic at the thought of descending yet again and losing the cross and the star in the sea that they continued to cut free sandbag after sandbag. The Eagle rose uncontrollably to a height of almost six hundred metres, and when they felt the wind their courage returned, because it was blowing strongly towards the north‐east.” Eberlein pointed at some figures:

Pres. pos. acc. to A. (approx.) 79 degrees 51 minutes N – 11 degrees 15 minutes E estimated distance to pos. of ray. – 550 km 40 knots, approx. time – 7 hrs.

“Behind them now lay Spetsbergen’s glacier and the peaks, and under them the black sea. Nils Strindberg noted that he spotted a steamboat trying to follow their course. They began to splice the remaining drag ropes, but by now they were flying far too high for the ropes to provide any 34

steering power. As they floated into a thickening cloud of mist it began to get extremely cold, and the balloon’s thin silk fabric cooled down. They quickly began losing hydrogen, and yet Strindberg was still convinced they would reach the position of the ray before evening.”

Eberlein lifted out a few remaining items from the bottom of the steel box, a handful of black and white film negatives, encased in glass, which he lined up on the table with his gloved fingers. Then he slid one of the glass plates over to Don, so that the photograph rested beside the crumpled page of the journal. “The first picture Strindberg took from the balloon’s gondola,” said Eberlein. The film negative inside the glass was almost blank, apart from a thin black line. “Remember the colours are reversed,” said Eberlein. “They are approaching the white line of the pack ice.” Then he slid across one more negative showing two light spheres and a black ray. Under the lower sphere the fused cross and star could be made out over the dark flame of the burner. “Strindberg took this an hour or so later, down in the gondola’s sleeping section. That must have been just before Andrée went to bed. They were by now at a height of almost seven hundred metres. Everything dripped with moisture because of the cloud, which was why he dared to light the Bunsen burner to check the position of the ray. The slightest misdirected spark would have been a catastrophe, and The Eagle would have turned into a ball of fire. “What’s that?” asked Don, pointing at some white lines at the negative’s lower edge. “Points of the compass and the time,” said Eberlein. “Strindberg’s camera was equipped with a mechanism that marked each photograph. This photo was taken just after midnight, at dawn on the twelfth of July, and the ray’s position had still not changed.” He flipped over a few more pages, and for every page Strindberg’s handwriting became more of a scribble. “It was the cold from the cloud and the loss of hydrogen that made the balloon start to descend. On the morning of the twelfth of July the balloon netting and the support lines had begun to ice over and weighed The Eagle down by almost a thousand kilos. As you can see, he found it difficult to write ‐ every fifty meters they bumped against the ice. The course had become more easterly and they argued about the best way to make the balloon struggle on in the direction indicated by the Bunsen burner. At around 11 p.m. Frænkel and Strindberg turned in, but they couldn’t get any rest.” Eberlein pointed to a few lines:

Rustle of ropes in the snow – eternal flapping of the sails

And on the next page:

Pole buoy sacrificed

“On the following day, the thirtieth of July, they jettisoned everything that could be dispensed with. It wasn’t hard to sacrifice the pole buoy they had taken with them for the sake of appearances, but they also started to get rid of quite a lot of provisions. After the gondola had been stationary on the ice overnight, the weather turned sunny and the warmth made the balloon lift. Once again they tried to rise enough to catch the winds at a greater height, and were able to continue in a north‐easterly direction. Then one of the drag ropes fastened among the blocks of ice below. By the time they had managed to free it, the warmth had disappeared and the balloon was no longer ascending. There are no entries for this day. Strindberg writes further on that the continual thudding of the gondola against the ice made him feel seasick. But on the 35

morning of the fourteenth of July their luck finally changed.” Eberlein lifted up another glass‐enclosed negative. The image was again one of the spheres, but this time the light was different. A misty halo surrounded the Bunsen burner, the cross and the star. “It was taken at three in the morning,” said Eberlein, indicating the markings at the lower edge of the negative. “They anchored by an ice floe to rest for a while, and the midnight sun was so weak that to capture anything at all Strindberg would have had to use his magnesium flash. He must have lit the Bunsen burner fifty metres away from the balloon – you can make out the contour of the gondola through the sphere.” Don tilted the negative towards him but saw nothing except the thin ray from the star which fell on the lower dome, arching above the silhouette of the cross. “By the time Nils Strindberg came back to the balloon, Andrée had plotted their position with his sextant and was ready to give up. But when Strindberg showed him...” Eberlein moved on a few pages in the journal, then stopped, frowned, turned back a few pages, and found the place:

14 July 2 hrs 47 dawn Greenw.tid the ray has shifted position! measured twice after pause w. safety flame lat. 82°55'N – lat. 31°09'E new approx. distance: less than 35 kilometres!

“As you can see,” Eberlein continued, “the ray had moved. Actually, that shouldn’t have taken Strindberg by surprise ‐ he had himself estimated that the shift in position occurred every three days when he was making his calculations at Stockholm’s University College. They had departed on the eleventh of July, and now it was the fourteenth, and the new position that the Pole Star indicated was at a distance of less than forty kilometres away. They made a last attempt to get the balloon airborne and jettisoned everything apart from dry provisions, rifles, snow shoes and the sledges. The Eagle lifted for a final time up over the ice and floated slowly north for almost thirty kilometres. At eleven minutes past eight in the evening they decided they had come close enough to their goal. After landing Andrée began to empty the balloon of hydrogen. Nils Strindberg lifted out the camera, brushed the snow from the impregnated beech frames and took eleven photographs as the gigantic silk balloon deflated onto the ice. The following morning they assembled the sledges and began walking the final five kilometres towards their goal.”

Don leaned over the journal, his fingers slowly flicking over the pages. On the pages after the last position markings there was a kind of inventory of everything that had been packed. Several of the items had either been reduced in weight or completely crossed off. The list ended with a circled entry:

6 bottles of champagne donated by the King

Don was about to turn the pages when he noticed that strangely the page with the list seemed poorly attached to the spine. Then it came away completely from the book, where it seemed the last pages had been torn out. All that remained was a single sheet, folded against the green‐ checked back cover. He looked up at Eberlein, who seemed to have been waiting for his discovery. “Yes, isn’t that odd?” Eberlein said. “Of a hundred and twenty attached pages, the last thirteen 36

were already missing when the journal was finally found at the end of 1899.” The German slid a negative across the table. It appeared to be the last one he had to show them. “One single exposure from the last roll of film was all the foundation managed to develop. It was found beside Nils Strindberg’s body, in a copper cylinder in the pocket of his felt jacket.” Inside the glass plate that Eberlein had placed in front of Eva and Don could be seen a blackened, cracked negative showing a hazy reversed image with something resembling black flakes of sleet. Behind the snow a white hole shone in the dark ice. “They’ve reached an ice hole?” asked Don. “Not an ice hole,” said Eberlein. “Look at the outside.” Don raised the negative again. In the picture, the edges of the hole formed a perfect circle, and comparing it with the figure looking through binoculars, standing beside a small flag at the edge of the orifice, he understood that the opening down into the ice was very large, probably 50 metres in diameter. “Strindberg must have taken the picture himself,” said Eberlein. “He was the only one able to use the camera. But we have not been able to determine whether it’s Frænkel or Andrée who is looking down into the hole.” Don tried in his mind to reverse the negative’s monochrome to see how it must have looked on that July day in 1897. In the distance, a circular abyss in the white snow, and right at the edge the silhouette of the figure with the binoculars. It was as if someone with a welder had cut a tunnel directly down into the bowels of the earth. Eberlein indicated the markings at the lower edge of the photograph. “Eighty‐two degrees and fifteen minutes north on the morning of the sixteenth of July 1897. They find themselves at exactly the spot indicated by the ray. It must have taken them twenty‐ four hours to reach it after leaving the balloon.” Don put down the negative and released the last folded sheet from the book. He looked up at Eberlein, who nodded. Then he unfolded the sheet in front of him and smoothed it flat against the table with his gloved fingers. Over the page ran columns of numbers: dates, precipitation, air pressure and wind force. “It’s been torn from Frænkel’s meteorological report,” said Eberlein. The German carefully turned over the sheet in Don’s hands. On the reverse, scribbled over the tables, in ink that had run into pools, the occasional legible word could be made out, disconnected and sprawling across the page:

All lost!!! north the strangers have already the opening Andrée and the burner execution! Knut bleeds abdomen! morphine, six doses I have since morning sought protection in voices above me the door below open! and they know! the cross? and the star! sucked down the vault, the walls followed us even here? what The Eagle? the older named Jansen, but it was the younger cannot turn back but

Anna, I dearest, pretty Anna

“Nils Strindberg, writing to his fiancée.” It was Eva Ström’s voice. “To Anna Charlier,” nodded Eberlein. “It’s our last lead.”

When Don also looked up from the scattered lines, Eberlein pulled the paper towards him and began to fold it up slowly. Then he replaced it, with the meteorological readings facing outwards, at the back of the checked oilcloth‐covered book, and closed it. “Talking about Anna Charlier, you could say the end of the story was unnecessarily tragic. May I...?” Eberlein took the last negative from Don’s hand and put it back in the box with the journal. Then he continued: “The bodies of Frænkel and Strindberg were found two years later. They lay thirty metres down in an ice crack, where they had slid. Andrée’s corpse was never found, but Strindberg’s last notes seem to suggest that he was murdered. The only documentation remaining from the expedition itself is Strindberg’s travel journal and a few photographs. You have seen almost everything there is to see, and that only takes up one steel box. “Andrée...” began Don. For some reason he was unable to move his tongue, but it had to be said. “Andrée’s body was in the last camp on Kvitoya.” “Kvitoya…?” queried Eberlein. “Yes, Kvitoya,” replied Don. ”Andrée’s body lay there.” His cracked voice gained strength. ”You surely know about the discoveries on Kvitoya? The last camp, where the bodies were found, equipment from the long trek over the ice? All Nils Strindberg’s photographs which have been able to be developed, and...” “As I said,” interrupted Eberlein, “that part of the story is tragic, and now, with hindsight, quite unnecessary.” He looked down at the table, and began to gather together the rest of the negatives. “Well, the Swedes didn’t know where to look,” Eberlein continued with his head bowed. “But the German sponsors knew the co‐ordinates of the targeted area, and in the summer of 1899 the foundation sent the rescue expedition that found the gondola beside the remnants of the balloon. In the sleeping section, on some blankets, were the last calculations Strindberg and Andrée must have made before they set off towards the position of the ray. It was simply a question of following them.” “And when they got there?” said Don. Eberlein looked up. “No hole, no cross, no star. No Bunsen burner. The bodies of Nils Strindberg and Knut Frænkel were found, as I said, thirty metres down in an ice crevice. Frænkel had been shot in the stomach. In Strindberg’s rucksack were the copper cylinders which contained some of the pictures I have shown you, and his oilcloth book. He had hidden Frænkel’s meteorological sheet in his glove. And that was all they knew – about as much as we know today.”

A silence fell in the library vault, broken only by a gentle clinking as the glass negatives fell into place in the metal box. Then Eva Ström’s voice was heard again: “You said something about Strindberg’s fiancée, Anna Charlier?” 38

“A precautionary measure,” said Eberlein quietly. “A precautionary measure which was taken too far. For a long time the financiers behind the foundation thought they would be able to find out who the strangers were, the people responsible for the men’s death, and retrieve the cross and the star. They didn’t want Nobel or people in Sweden asking questions about the fate of the expedition. And because of the terms of the contract, they also saw themselves as sole owners of the cross and the star, as well as the knowledge about how to use them, plus any other discoveries Strindberg and Andrée might have made. Falsifying a number of documents was no problem. They were familiar with Andrée’s handwriting ‐ that’s how his two journals from the expedition were created. It was the same for Strindberg’s stenographical annotations and Frænkel’s meteorological reports. The feigned photographs from the expedition were probably the least successful – they still give quite an arranged impression. To deflect all interest from north‐easterly latitudes, they then set the trail to follow a south‐westerly direction. The choice fell to Kvitoya, north of Svalbard, a secluded place which could be prepared undisturbed. There the last camp was constructed and finally three badly decomposed bodies were placed there, together with a number of objects found in the gondola. To enable the Swedes to identify the remains, Strindberg’s and Andrée’s monograms were stitched onto the clothes. The work was carried out during the last summer months of the century, but it wasn’t until thirty years after the trail had been laid that some walrus hunters from Ålesund happened to come across the planted boat hook engraved ‘Andrée’s polar expedition’. The bodies were later carried in a cortege through central Stockholm, and that was the end of that. “But Andrée’s family, and Nils Strindberg’s Anna ‐ they must have noticed that the bodies that came home from Kvitoya were completely different?” said Don. “After thirty years there wasn’t much to see,” replied Eberlein. “And not only that, the remains were cremated without a post mortem, a great scandal at the time.” “And Anna Charlier?” Eva Ström spoke again. “The entire operation was overdone, of course,” said Eberlein. “What would it have mattered if the bodies had never been found? It was all quite unnecessary. And as far as Anna Charlier was concerned, she never stopped grieving for Nils Strindberg. When she died her heart was removed from her body and buried in a silver box at Strindberg’s side in the memorial garden at Norra Cemetery. The fact that her heart lies beside the wrong box has always seemed very cruel to me. May I...?” Eberlein began to fold up the large drawing of the spheres. The old glue crackled as the sheet of paper closed over Nils Strindberg’s drawing of the northern hemisphere. “After the cover‐up on Svalbard the German sponsors continued their search. As time passed, things slowed down, of course, and the foundation became more of an archive, the keeper of a secret, a historical riddle still needing an answer. He placed the folded sheet in the metal box and there were two clicks as the lid’s catches were closed. The table was now empty. “Today the original founders are dead, of course, but the foundation’s mission remains, and the contract that was once made with Strindberg and Andrée is still considered valid. As you can understand, Erik Hall’s discovery has raised huge expectations. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that in Germany people are prepared to go a long way to clarify what happened.” “You want Strindberg’s instruments back,” said Don. Eberlein smiled. “The foundation wants what belongs to them, what they have paid for.” The yellowish‐green eyes stared from behind the anti‐reflecting glasses. “You, Herr Titelman, just happen to be the last link to Erik Hall, to the document and the other 39

object he seems to have found... a star, perhaps?” Don twisted in his chair and his hand slipped down towards the postcard in his jacket. “You must also be interested in getting to the bottom of it yourself, isn’t that right?” said Eberlein. “The cross gone, trouble with the police. Perhaps we can be of help. And if it’s a question of money...” As Eberlein’s voice faded away Don imagined the double doors of the library’s cocoon opening, saw himself walking down the spiral stairs, through the bright rooms, down the marble staircase, past the gilded mirror and out through the front door. Then he opened his eyes. “It struck me, as you were talking, that Erik Hall might just have mentioned something about a star...” The smile appeared again on Eberlein’s face, with his slightly too red mouth, his dingy teeth. “Yes, something about a star,” continued Don. “There were so many different versions. As I say, he was always so drunk when he phoned.” The back of the chair creaked as Eva Ström turned to face him. “You must...” she began. “And not only a star,” Don went on. “Erik Hall also told me about some kind of document he had found down there. It was such an unimportant discovery it slipped my mind. A few lines on a letter, or maybe a card of some kind.” Then he looked into Eberlein’s eyes, took in the expensive suit, the arrogance of the German upper class. “Did he say what was written on it?” Eberlein asked flatly. “Well, it’s a little hard to remember... it was like a code, I think,” said Don. “A code?” “Yes, or perhaps a verse. Among the words was a date and a place name.” “So what can you remember?” “I…” began Don. “Yes?” “It depends how you count them, but you could say I can recall four words altogether. The name of a place and the year. The Hygiene Institute of the Waffen‐SS, Ravensbrück, 1942.”

1 9 t h e p o s t c a r d

The carpeting spread out in a dark pentagon around the table with the closed metal box, and as Don silently lifted his eyes to the library ceiling he worked out that the upper rows of leather‐ bound spines must be almost five metres off the floor. If only he could find a way of getting through that last half metre of old insulation and the outer layer of roof tiles he would be able to see out over the wide night sky, perhaps even make out the tower of Seglora church. A possible tool in this escape attempt would be the brass stepladder on wheels which was leaning a couple of metres away from the slumped figure of Toad, but somehow the angle of the ladder seemed far too steep. Climbing the wall would be impossible, Don now realised, for the rows of bookshelves had apparently begun to lean inwards, as if the room itself was closing over them. In the light from the glass lamps Eberlein’s jaws were working. Don could see how the movement transmitted itself up towards his temples, where the German’s thin skin beat as if his pulse was racing. There was a scraping as Toad suddenly rose from the stool over by the brass ladder. On his way to the table he avoided looking directly at Eva and Don and went straight to Eberlein, bending his wide head close the frames of Eberlein’s glasses. It was impossible to hear what Toad whispered, but from the guttural intonation Don understood that the words were said in German. Eberlein stared straight ahead as he listened, his eyes fixed on a point far beyond Don to the locked double doors. When Toad had fallen silent Eberlein nodded slowly. Then he stood up and straightened the sleek fabric of his trousers. Then he said: “I have to make a phone call.” This time his smile was superficial and did not reach his eyes, and the German’s face, which had been so animated during the long tale, was now once again pale grey and silent.

When the light had disappeared after Eberlein’s exit, Toad threw himself down opposite them at the table. Eva Ström had already begun to gather up her papers and put them, together with her pen, in her handbag. As her hand reappeared out of the bag it held a red mobile phone. She looked enquiringly at Toad, but he only shrugged. After a few seconds the display had come to life and the lawyer quickly tapped in a number. While she waited for the signal she fixed her eyes on Don. He noticed how her forehead wrinkled. She looked down at the phone and tried again, taking longer between the each digit. Next to the digits the reception column indicated low. Toad’s half‐closed eyes opened slightly. “You have a landline in the house, I take it?” Eva Ström asked. At first there was no reaction, but when Don repeated the question in German Toad shook his massive head.

Don watched Eva make another attempt, but then his thoughts began to wander. It was as if the amphetamines had corroded a crack in his memory and where once the images had seemed so clear, everything was now clouded and spinning. 41

The photographs he had seen of the last camp on Kvitoya – Strindberg’s body buried under the heap of stones, Andrée’s log book, the skeletal remains of Knut Fraenkel – appeared in double exposure against Eberlein’s black negatives. Don gave a dry cough, a laugh he had managed to smother on its way out of his windpipe, as he thought of the sketched spheres, the ray over the northern hemisphere, and the careful movement of Eberlein’s fingers in their cotton gloves. It was like being in a hall full of broken mirrors, and to get himself out of there he did what seemed to him to be the easiest thing: he opened his bag and took out 6mgs of Alprazolam.

Don just had time to screw the lid back on when there was a click in the lock behind him and light again streamed in from the double doors. Eberlein was back. “You can’t have had much luck,” said Eva Ström, when the German came up to the table. He looked at her questioningly. “Your assistant tells me there’s no landline. And you can’t make calls from in here.” She showed him her mobile. “No, that’s true,” said Eberlein. “It’s probably because of the bugging protection. There is some kind of interference transmitter in the house as far as I understand. As I said, the building now belongs to the German Embassy and they have their special rules.” Eva Ström returned her phone to her bag and pushed back her chair. “Telephone or not, it’s time for us to leave, if you have no more questions. I really hope we have come to the end of this peculiar outing.” Her last words were aimed directly at the balding Security Police officer and his colleague, who had now entered into the library. “I’m afraid it won’t be quite like that,” said Eberlein. Once again he placed his hand on Don’s shoulder, and pressed it lightly: “Even if I personally want to trust your words about Ravensbrück, they don’t seem to have made much of an impression in Germany. They talk about giving you a choice. A choice I would prefer to discuss with you alone.” “I don’t understand,” said Eva Ström. But Eberlein had already signalled to the Security Police officers and the balding one walked up to her and took hold of her arm. It looked at first as if the lawyer was going to refuse, but then she resigned herself to the situation and stood up slowly, her movements stiff after so many hours spent sitting down, the high‐buttoned blouse creased, blue veins showing through her pale tights. Eberlein held up her coat. “It will only take a few minutes,” he said. Eva took the coat without answering, put her bag over her shoulder and gave Don a long look. “Whatever he says, we will soon be back in Falun,” she said.

When the double doors had closed behind Eva Ström and the two Security Police officers, Eberlein sat himself down in the chair beside Don. That whiff of perfume again, a heavy aroma, the impossibility of relinquishing his gaze. The German’s hand on Don’s knee was thin, narrow‐ wristed, as if it belonged to a woman. “There are so many modern methods nowadays,” said Eberlein. Don looked towards the doors, but the soft voice lured him back. “What before was a simple lock can today consist of devices that read the iris of an eye or the

lines of a fingerprint. And talking about fingers, some of these systems are so advanced they can even detect whether the skin is warm or cold, to determine whether the finger is attached to a living person.”

Don tried in vain to summon up the effects of the Alprazolam. “But, as with everything, there is room for cleverly made falsifications.” Eberlein patted his thigh. “Anyone who wanted to create a copy of your fingerprint, for example, would be able to brush the china cup, which you used so recently here in the library, with a fine charcoal powder. Then they could lift the imprint from the cup with something as simple as transparent adhesive tape. A needle would be used to etch the lines from the tape onto a fingertip‐sized mould, which could then be filled with a fine layer of gelatine. When gelatine sets it can conduct electricity and heat, just like your own skin, so you would have a false fingertip that would fool any fingerprint reading system you like.” “I’ve always had a love of technical details,” said Don. “There are many possible areas of use,” Eberlein continued. “One would be to imprint a couple of your fingertips onto the broken bottle, which will be lying clearly visible somewhere in the undergrowth by Erik Hall’s lake. Of course, we would be forced to hand in the bottle immediately to the Swedish police ‐ it would be completely illegal to keep such an important clue to ourselves. A murder weapon with the culprit’s fingerprints – something like that has to be regarded as conclusive.” Don felt himself nodding. “But it’s a laborious process,” sighed Eberlein. He took his hand from Don’s thigh and leaned back in his chair. “Yes, it does sound complicated,” said Don. “Perhaps the broken bottle that killed poor Erik Hall won’t even be found. In that case it would be a lot of work for nothing.” Don nodded again. “Perhaps there won’t even be any reason for us to look. Maybe you and you lawyer could find a suitable explanation which would make everything I have just described unnecessary.” Don made the light disappear by slowly closing his eyes, then he tried to recharge his thoughts by rubbing the side of his nose with his fingers. Finally he said: “Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen. About things you know nothing, you can say nothing.” Eberlein smiled. “You have until tomorrow morning to think about it.”

Don heard Toad move towards the double doors and then the sound of a light knocking. When he opened his eyes he saw that both the Security Police officers had remained outside with Eva, over by the black window. He rose hesitantly from his chair, his hand on his shoulder bag. “Your accommodation will be rather confined and less than perfect, I’m afraid,” said Eberlein. “But you will have to be content with what the house has to offer.” Then he felt Toad’s hand on his back and found himself propelled slowly out of the library, on the way to the winding spiral staircase.

2 0 t h e s y r i n g e

“Ein riesiges hefker,” repeated Don to himself, whether for the fifth or twentieth time, he had no idea. They sat side by side, each on their own plastic‐wrapped foam mattress in a small pantry, their backs leaning against a sideboard. “Where does that come from?” asked Eva Ström. “Ein riesiges hefker?” Don winced as he tried to change position. The ache in his neck had started as he was listening to Eberlein’s long tale in the library and now, after yet more hours of wakefulness, it had started to spread through his upper arms and down towards his hands and fingers. “The only good thing left by my paternal grandmother. Yiddish with a musical pronunciation.” “So what would your grandmother have called this?” Eva asked. “Ein riesiges hefker,” repeated Don. “A hell of a mess.” Eva Ström grinned. “Ein riesiges hefker,” she said. “Yes, very true.”

They had followed Toad’s swaying back through the labyrinthine basement. Via a dining room with a ceiling painted with two eagles in flight against a pale blue sky they had at last arrived at a kitchen. There Toad had unlocked a door which led into the windowless pantry. After asking Eva and Don to step in, he handed over the keys to the balding police officer. The cupboard doors were covered with yellow‐marbled wood panelling and there were shelves above the sink and draining board. The shining zinc splashback reflected bowls containing whisks and ladles, and two heavy refrigerators stood whirring next to the grey‐speckled laminate surface of the worktop. Behind a tinted glass door with a small keyhole a wine cellar could be seen, the bottles resting on elegant metal racks. Toad had nodded towards the two mattresses on the floor and the there was a rattling as the balding officer locked the door. To begin with Don had been able to hear murmuring in Swedish on the other side of the locked door, but the whispering had soon ceased. Perhaps the two Security Police officers had fallen asleep. It was, after all, getting on for three in the morning.

During the hours spent in the poky room Don and Eva had time to go backwards and forwards over Eberlein’s threat. When Don had first told her, Eva had not believed him, but then she said that after everything that had happened since they had left Falun police station, the issue of falsified fingerprints was the least surprising. Don had said something about the German tradition of pairing sensory‐bewildering theories with merciless methodology, and as their tiredness increased a kind of sleep‐deprived light‐headedness crept over them both, and soon the pantry was filled with muffled laughter.

Eva got up from her mattress and went over to the long draining board. She opened a few cupboard doors at random and finally found a large glass which she filled with water. Then she seemed to change her mind and poured the water out into the sink. Don followed her gaze towards the dark glass doors and the wine cellar’s shadowy rows of bottles. “You did research into religious symbolism, didn’t you?” said Eva. Don nodded, but she had already turned away and begun to search through the drawers under 44

the work surface. “So what is the symbolic meaning of a knife?” “A knife?” He opened the lid to his memory and discovered some lingering remnants that had not been tampered with. “Sacrifice and revenge. Death.” He took a deep breath and continued, his eyes closed: “Cutting with a knife can symbolise liberation, as in Buddhism. A sign of the birth of the ego, cutting through all ignorance and pride.” He heard Eva rummaging around in the drawers. “For Christians the knife means martyrdom. The apostle Bartholomew was flayed alive with a knife, for example.” Eva’s heels clicked as she walked over the stone floor tiles. “For the Nazis the knife belonged together with the swastika. The emblem of their forerunner, the Thule society, was a dagger over a swastika. SS‐men were given double‐edged daggers at their enlistment, which they were to protect with their very lives. They had the bizarre idea that in this way they were ennobled in direct descent from the German order of knights.” There was a clatter and then silence, but Don had only just begun: “In Norse mythology the goddess Hel’s dish was hunger and her knife was said to be called...” “Thanks, that’s enough,” said Eva. “Her knife was said to be called famine.” When Don looked up he saw that Eva had turned to face him. In her hand she held a small pointed table knife with a wooden handle. “What I want to know,” said Eva, walking towards the cellar door, “What I want to know is if a knife can be seen as …” She stuck the knife into the keyhole. “As a key.” There was a snap as the frail catch of the glass door broke. “This will be something to write about in the Lawyers’ Journal,” said Don. “There are limits to what you can put up with,” said Eva. She worked the knife in the door frame, opened the door, and disappeared into the gloom.

Don had almost nodded off when he heard her heels inside the wine cellar getting closer. The glass doors swung open and Eva gently placed a dusty bottle on the draining board. It was black and rounded and on its label Don could read ‘Graham’s Vintage Port’. “The Ambassador has a fine collection,” said Eva. “This is from 1948.” She lifted two green‐tinted glasses from the cupboard above the sink and put them beside the bottle of port. Don watched her movements from his mattress. “One of the greats,” she went on, as she removed the seal strip. “One of the really great vintages, isn’t?” That was a question way beyond Don’s knowledge. “Well, you might pretend not to be interested…” Eva pulled out the cork. “...but I’m telling you that the 48 is magnificent. This port could have been stored for at least another fifty years without being spoiled. It is practically immortal.” She poured the port and handed one glass to Don. He noticed how she watched his expression closely as he lifted it to his mouth. 45

“A taste of postwar Lisbon,” said Eva. When he took his first sip, Don thought that with its strong, almost inexplicably concentrated taste of coffee and caramel, it was like drinking syrup. “It was an unusually cold July that year,” Eva continued, after swirling the port around her mouth. “At the beginning of August an oppressive dry heat set in and the grapes ripened fast. If I remember correctly, the heat was so powerful that they had to bring forward harvesting, but even so most of the fruit dried up. It tasted remarkably sweet even then. At the beginning of the sixties, the 48 was already a classic, comparable to the 1942, which was also an amazing year.” She moved her tongue over her sweetness on her lips. “For wine, perhaps,” said Don, putting his glass down. He got up clumsily from the mattress and made an attempt to shake off the stiffness in his arms and legs. His reflection in the splashback looked like the mechanical movements of a scarecrow. He could also see a reflection of Eva Ström, propped against the draining board. Under the speckled herringbone pattern of her jacket her brown blouse was half undone and a lock of grey hair had come loose and fallen across her eyes. “See what you can find yourself,” she said, and nodded towards the forced glass door. “There must be something else we can do?” said Don irritably. But she only shrugged her shoulders.

It was cold inside the wine cellar. The air that streamed towards him was raw as he made his way between the rows of protruding bottles, and the inset bulbs gave out a dull light. On a barrel stood a gilded corkscrew and two crystal glasses, and beside the barrel a staircase ran down to what appeared to be a lower level. With a glance over his shoulder Don could make out the figure of Eva through the darkened glass, but although she was waiting for him he decided to go on down the stairs. The walls of the wine cellar’s lower floor were covered in rough brickwork. The thick planks lining the walls were set close together and filled with rows of dirty bottles. A few naked light bulbs hung from the high ceiling, from fabric‐covered cables. Don wondered how the lawyer had found what she was looking for so quickly. Not being a great connoisseur himself he supposed the best selection was always stored furthest in, so when he reached the far end of the wine cellar he stood on tiptoe and drew out a bottle from the middle of the upper row. It looked rather insignificant and was labelled 1997. The next was better, a Burgundy from 1974 and the third, from 1951, seemed really promising. “If you’ve saved something that long it must be good,” Dom muttered to himself. Then he looked back at the empty place on the shelf, where the bottles had been.

Eva Ström was still propped against the draining board when Don came back up to the pantry. She looked more tired than when he had left her, and no longer interested in the bottle of port. “This saga has got to come to an end,” she said. “There’s something down there you have to see,” answered Don.

He led her back into the wine cellar, closed the door behind them and made sure it was properly shut. After walking along the narrow spaces between the racks, past the barrel with the crystal glasses, they made their way down to the lower cellar. On the floor about fifty bottles were lined up, which Don had cleared from the top shelf. “You don’t stint yourself,” said Eva Ström. Don pointed at a half‐metre high wooden crate that he had emptied to stand on as he lifted down 46

the bottles. Eva took a few paces forward, looked at him enquiringly, and stepped up onto the box. With her fingers on the top shelf, she peered into the opening that had been created when the bottles had been removed. “You can see it, can’t you?” said Don. Eva nodded, then stretched her arm inside. “I can’t reach the back,” she said. “It looks as if it’s made of glass,” he said. “I can’t…” After a final attempt, Eva gave up, withdrew her arm and looked down at him. “And what had you thought of doing now?” she asked him, still gripping the top shelf to keep her balance. “Help me get the rest of the bottles out of the way,” said Don. Eva looked at him in questioningly, but finally she passed down a bottle of Bordeaux, followed by another and then another, and when the top shelf was empty they lifted it off the wall and began the work of emptying the next row. Soon the far end of the wine cellar was covered in dusty bottles, and when they had removed a second plank they had no need to stand on the wooden case to reach up. Now, previously hidden behind the shelves up near the ceiling, a small square cellar window had become visible, its red and blue stained glass smeared in the accumulated dirt of many years. Don stamped on the wooden box to break it up and with difficulty managed to lever off one of its planks. Two rusty nails protruded, and he held it in his hand like a weapon. “What if they hear?” asked Eva. Don shrugged his shoulders.

In silence they continued emptying the shelves until they reached the lower one, which they found to be attached to the wall with screws. Don was pleased about that, thinking it might bear his weight. He beckoned to Eva to support him. As he grasped her shoulder he pushed himself away from the bottom shelf. When he hoisted himself up he swayed backwards, so that Eva had to push him back towards the wall in case he lost his balance. The little cellar window was now within reach, less than half a metre above his head. Don bounced on the pliable shelf and it seemed to take his weight. Then he stretched out his hand. “Give it to me.” Eva handed him the plank with the protruding nails. “Now you’ve got to support my back,” he said. Nothing happened “You’ve got to…” Then he felt both her hands on his back. He took a firm grip on the plank, the nails facing outward. He had no idea how hard he would have to strike, so he tried a gentle tap to start with. There was a scraping as the nails bounced off the stained glass. He made a second attempt, harder than the first, a sharp powerful blow, and the window cracked, falling in blue and red shards onto the floor. There was the sharp crunching of broken glass and Don felt Eva’s fingers pressing into his back. Then, after a long silence, her voice came from behind him: “Yes, well, that was certainly discreet.” Don pulled one of his jacket sleeves as far over his hand as possible and began to knock out the rest of the glass from the edges of the cellar window. He could already feel how the night air had 47

begun to seep in. When most of the pieces of glass had been removed, he let go his hold on his sleeve and stretched his hand out through the window. About twenty centimetres down he came across something damp, and when he drew his hand back into the cellar he saw in the light of the bulb that his fingers were black with earth. He showed Eva. “I’m not so sure this is a good idea,” said Eva. Her hair was a mess, her eyes red‐rimmed. “Have you got a better one?” asked Don, and climbed down. There was no answer.

The amphetamines together with the Alprazolam had really kicked in now, and it was with a feeling of remarkable calm that Don moved back towards the glass door and into the pantry. His black shoulder bag was still there on the plastic‐covered mattress, the ceiling light reflected in its worn leather. He lifted it up by its strap and then went over to the locked kitchen door to listen. No footsteps, no voices, could be heard. He looked at the clock. It was four‐thirty and the outside of the house would still be in darkness. A brisk jog along the oak‐lined drive and he would be out on the road which ran past the outdoor museum of Skansen. From there he would be able to reach Karlaplan and get an underground train north, to the only place he knew to be safe. Then he began to wonder about the jogging – when had he actually done that last? Although he had always had an excellent memory, he could not recall any images of that type of exercise. But something, probably the Alprazolam combined with the amphetamines, gave Don the feeling that in a hard pressed situation like this he would actually be able to move very fast. He put his bag over his shoulder, checked it was securely in place, and with a last glance towards the pantry pulled the glass door closed behind him.

In the brick‐lined vault Eva Ström was waiting, looking up at the gaping cellar window. “It’s far too small” she said. “You’ll never get out, and even if you did, what would you do then?” “I have a good idea,” said Don. “That sounds comforting,” replied Eva, her arms folded across the herringbone. “Better than staying here,” said Don. “So what about it?” Eva looked away at the staircase to the upper floor. Then she shrugged her shoulders and said: “A lawyer must always see a way out of a process and never lead a client into a dead end where the door slams shut behind him.” She looked up to where he had now heaved himself into a standing position, balancing on the bottom shelf. “Good luck.”

Don had taken two white tea cloths with him when he left the pantry. Now he wrapped them round his hands, stretched them up to the window frame, and grabbed hold. When he discovered the strength in his arms was not enough, he called for help. Eva gave him a shove upwards and then he stood with his boot on her shoulder. “This isn’t very dignified,” he thought he heard her say, just before he got a good grip, hauled himself up and landed with his chest halfway out of the window. There was a sudden sharp pain in his stomach from shard of glass he had missed. Then he

turned his head cautiously, looking around at the freedom outside. To the left, a few metres away, he glimpsed the villa’s brown wooden cladding. To the right was the cover of branches and leaves. Garden shrubs, thought Don, and pulled himself a little further forwards. Then he managed to get his legs over the sill and finally crouched down with his back against the dark outer wall. “What’s it look like?” The whisper came from the cellar below. Don edged as quietly as he could back to the window again. He looked down at Eva Ström’s face below, looking more worried now. “I didn’t think you were serious,” she hissed. “You were a great help, anyway,” said Don. She nodded and looked undecidedly around the empty brick vault. “So you’re staying put? Don asked. “I...” He reached down his hand. Eva slowly uncrossed her arms and took a hesitant step forwards. Don gripped one of her wrists and managed to lift her onto the bottom shelf. He took another grip, this time both her wrists. He leaned back, his boots pushing against the outer window sill. She was surprisingly light. It was like lifting a child. When he had managed to manoeuvre her most of the way out, Don heard Eva suddenly cry out. Immediately he let go of her hands, watching her kick one leg jerkily against the other, as if she had fastened on something. Then finally she managed to free herself and crept up alongside him against the wall of the house. She reached down to touch one of her legs and showed him her fingers. It was impossible to see in the darkness but when Don took hold of her hand he felt it was covered with something thick and glutinous. “I’ve cut my leg. You might have been…” Eva’s voice was still controlled, but she sounded tense. “You might have checked that glass more carefully.” Don could not think of a suitable answer. Instead he took one of the tea cloths and pressed it on the place she indicated, directly below the fold of her knee, a gash ten centimetres long, running across her calf. He felt her grasp his hand, a grip that tightened as the pain from her leg intensified. They remained like that for a few minutes until Don heard, through her quick breathing, the sound of footsteps. “Someone’s coming,” he hissed. He heard how she tried to hold her breath, taking short sniffs through her nose, her lips pressed tightly together.

Don crawled through the bushes, moving branches aside so that he could see. There, out on the terrace, lit up by the facade lights, stood the balding Security Police officer. He had taken a cigarette from a packet and soon a flame could be seen above his hand, followed by a glow as he inhaled. He had stopped only about ten meters from the bushes where they were crouched, hidden in the darkness up against the wall. Don picked up the choking smell of smoke. Some distance away, at the turning point in the drive, was the silver grey combi estate. The Security officer finished his cigarette slowly, then shook out another from his pack and stuck it between his lips. 49

Don began rummaging through his bag with the idiotic idea of finding a weapon of some kind. He heard Eva behind him shift position cautiously. Her movements against the wall ought not to have been audible, but something in the stance of the balding man changed. He removed the cigarette from his mouth and threw it to the ground. Then he turned around, his gaze directed at the corner room. In an instant Don realised they had been discovered, but when the Security Police officer took his time approaching, he knew there was still a chance. He looked down at the small plastic tube he had managed to find in his shoulder bag, surprised at how familiar he was with all its folds and pockets. He tried slowly backing towards Eva but that only made the man pick up speed. He bent down and swept the branches aside.

Then everything happened very fast.

Don felt himself being lifted up by his right arm and dragged towards the bright light of the terrace. Somewhere along the way he must have succeeded in striking the Security officer on the leg with his flailing boot, because he loosened his grip slightly. In that split second Don managed to turn himself around and put the plastic tube in his mouth. With his teeth he tore away the syringe’s protective cover and stabbed the long needle randomly at the officer’s neck. There was no doubt that it had met its target and sunk deep, for the man let out a yell and let go his hold of Don, but when Don looked up from the granite terrace what he saw confused him. The security officer was still standing, looking more surprised than anything else. At first Don could not understand what had gone wrong, but then he noticed the plunger in the syringe had not been pushed down. The plastic tube wobbled, its needle in the officer’s neck, while the man fumbled, trying to find where the pain was coming from. Then suddenly a figure in herringbone limped into the light and from behind a slim white hand grabbed the syringe and pressed down the plunger injecting six millilitres of Thalamonal directly into the officer’s bloodstream. He swayed, staggered a few metres sideways, then collapsed onto the granite paving stones. Eva Ström crouched down beside the fallen body, her hands holding her bleeding leg. Don ran up and began searching the officer’s pockets. He cursed until finally he found the car key. He took hold of Eva Ström’s arm and put it over his shoulders. They staggered towards the drive and the silver grey combi.

From a few metres away he used the remote to unlock the doors. Eva made no sound and seemed to be in shock. Don tipped her into the passenger seat, raced panting round to the driver’s side, tore open the door and threw himself behind the wheel. After one unsuccessful attempt in the dark he lit the interior light to look for the ignition, then turned the key and heard the sound of a powerful engine, something that could carry them away fast. He released the handbrake and began slowly rolling down the tree‐lined drive. It then occurred to Don that he ought to pick up speed and there was a screech as the wheels spun against the asphalt. At the last minute he managed to steer clear of the huge tree trunk that came rushing towards him, and the wheels spun off towards Skansen and the water of Brunnsviken.

On Djurgårdsvägen Eva shouted out as the car shook, and Don skidded to a halt by a bus shelter. He dug around in his bag again and found four violet tablets, but after she had swallowed them Don went cold as he realised he had got the dose completely wrong for someone who was not used to them. Patting her gently on the thigh he looked down at her leg. Her tights were wet through and filthy, 50

and when he removed her shoe it was full of blood. He wound the second tea cloth round her leg as hard as he could and tied it tight. When he looked up again, Eva’s head had slumped against the back of her seat. Don looked in the rear view mirror and decided at the last minute he would probably have time to pull out before the approaching lorry roared past. He launched the combi out onto the road and floored the accelerator. Strandvägen, he thought. Strandvägen, Hamngatan, Central Underground Station. Dump the car and then: the blue line north.