Liza Marklund - Red Wolf

The road wound its way along the fence, and she leaned forward to see through the windscreen better. She slowly passed the conscripts’ car park and reached an enormous shooting range. Ten men in green camouflage, with pine-twigs on their helmets, were running across the range, automatic weapons in their hands, the carbines bouncing against the recruits’ chests. A signpost indicated that the road continued towards Lulnäsudden, but a no-entry sign some hundred metres further on made her stop and turn the car round. The green men were no longer visible.

She stopped by the security block, hesitating for a moment before switching off the engine and getting out of the car. She walked alongside the plain-panelled building with its reflective windows, unable to see any doors, people, or even a bell. Just herself. Suddenly a loudspeaker somewhere up to her left addressed her.

‘What do you want?’

Taken aback, she looked up to where the voice had come from, saw nothing but panelling and chrome.

‘I’m here to see, um, Pettersson,’ she said to her reflection. ‘The Press Officer.’

‘Captain Pettersson, just a moment,’ said the voice, that of a young conscript.

She turned her back on the building and looked through the gates. The trees carried on inside, but between the trunks she could make out grey-green hangars and rows of military vehicles. It was hard to estimate how large the base was from the outside.

‘Go through the gate and into the first door on the right,’ the disembodied voice said.

Annika did as she was told, like a good citizen and spy.

The officer who met her was the archetype of the successful military man, stiff-backed, grey-haired and in good shape.

‘I’m Annika Bengtzon,’ she said, holding out her hand. ‘We spoke on the phone last week. The anniversary of the attack…’

The man held her hand for a second too long. She evaded his open gaze and friendly smile.

‘As I said on the phone, there isn’t much we can say that hasn’t been made public before. What we can provide are summaries of the situation as it was then, the conclusions we have previously presented, and a tour of the museum. Gustaf, who’s in charge of that, is off sick today, I’m afraid, but he’ll probably be up on his feet again tomorrow, if you want to come back.’

‘There’s no chance of taking a look at the site of the attack?’

His smile grew even broader. ‘I thought we cleared that up on the phone. We’ve never made that public.’

She smiled back tentatively. ‘Did you see the article by Benny Ekland in the Norrland News last week?’

The officer invited her to sit down at a table. She took off her coat and fished her notebook out of her bag.

‘I’ve got a copy of the text here, if you’d like to-’

‘I know the article you mean,’ he said, looking up at the conscript who had entered the room holding a clipboard. ‘If you could just sign the register?’

Annika signed herself in as a visitor to the base with an illegible scrawl.

‘Is there any truth in it?’ she asked, declining the offer of coffee.

The press officer poured a huge cup for himself, in a Bruce Springsteen mug.

‘Not much,’ he said, and Annika’s heart sank.

‘There were quite a few details that were new,’ she said, ‘at least for me. Could we go through the text, statement by statement, so that I can get an idea of which bits are accurate?’

She pulled the copy of the article out of her bag.

Captain Pettersson blew on his coffee and took a cautious sip.

‘The Lansen was gradually replaced by the J35 Draken in the late sixties,’ he said. ‘That much is true. The surveillance version came in sixty-seven, the fighter in the summer of sixty-nine.’

Annika was reading the article closely.

‘Is it true that there were sabotage attempts on the planes, with matches being stuck into various tubes?’

‘Left-wing groups ran around in here a fair bit back then,’ the press officer said. ‘The fence around the base is mostly symbolic; it’s fairly easy for anyone who really wants to to get over or through it. The match boys presumably thought they could damage the planes by inserting matches in the pitot tubes, but I have no evidence that they were in any way responsible for the attack in sixty-nine.’

Annika was taking notes.

‘And the leftover fuel? Is the information about buckets being used to collect it accurate?’

‘Well, yes,’ Pettersson said, ‘I suppose it is, but you can’t set light to aviation fuel with a match. It’s far too low octane. To set light to it, it has to be seriously warmed up, so that’s incorrect. At least, that wouldn’t work in Luleå in November.’

He smiled nonchalantly.

‘But there had been a big exercise that evening? And all the planes were outside?’

‘It was a Tuesday night,’ the officer said. ‘We always fly on Tuesdays; all the bases in the country do, and have done for decades. Three sorties, the last one landing at twenty-two hundred hours. After that the planes stand on the tarmac for an hour or so before they’re towed into the hangars. The attack took place at one thirty-five, so by then they were all indoors.’

Annika swallowed, lowering the article to her lap.

‘I thought we might finally be getting to the bottom of this whole business,’ she said, trying to smile at the press officer.

He smiled back with intense blue eyes, and she leaned forward.

‘It’s more than thirty years ago, now, though. Can’t you at least say what caused the explosion?’

Silence spread, but she had nothing against that: the pressure was on him, not her. Unfortunately Captain Pettersson seemed completely unconcerned that she had travelled a thousand kilometres for nothing. She was obliged to drop the subject.

‘Why did you come to the conclusion that the Russians were behind it?’

‘A process of elimination,’ he said, leaning back in his chair and tapping his pen against the mug. ‘The local groups were soon written off, and the security police know that there were no external activists here at the time, neither right nor left wing.’

‘How can you be so sure?’

For the first time the officer was completely serious, his pen silent.

‘Local groups were put under immense pressure after the attack. A whole lot of information came out: we know, for instance, exactly who was running around with those matches, but no one said a word about the attack. We concluded that no one knew anything. If they had, we would have found out.’

‘Did you or the police conduct the interviews?’

He was smiling faintly again.

‘Let’s just say that we helped each other.’

Annika turned the facts over in her mind, staring at her notes without seeing them.

‘But,’ she said, ‘the degree of silence in any group is dependent on how fundamentalist they are, isn’t it? How can you be sure that there wasn’t a cast-iron core of fully-fledged terrorists that you never caught sight of, because they simply didn’t want to be seen?’

The man was silent for slightly too long, then he laughed. ‘Where?’ he said, standing up. ‘Here in Luleå? In the middle of nowhere? It was the Russians, it must have been.’

‘So why content themselves with one Draken?’ Annika asked, gathering her things. ‘Why not blow up the whole base?’

Captain Pettersson shook his head and sighed. ‘To show us that they could, probably; to knock us off balance. We all wish we had the ability to see into their minds, to understand their reasoning. Why did they send Polish art dealers to visit all our officers? Why beach that submarine, U137, on the rocks outside Karlskrona? I’m sorry, but I have to give a presentation in a few minutes.’