Caroline Åberg - Stockholm Noir

“Confess.”

“To what, now?”

“To... to the crime. Shit, am I saying the wrong things?”

“No. But speak properly. Don’t stutter. You say nothing of Leijonborg. Nor that he brought in Tom Cruise. Nothing of this, nothing of the Impossible Missions Force. Nothing of your mission. Yes?”

“Yes. Yes.”

“You confess as a lone actor. We’re watching your mother. Do you understand?”

Nods, laughing. Kid thinks it’s a gas.

“On behalf of the IMF I deputize you, Mijailo Mijailovic, for a period of forty-eight hours. Boom.”

“Fucking wicked...” says the kid, dazed.

“The IMF will admit no involvement. We have agents everywhere.”

“... best day of my life,” breathes the greasy Slav.

Eyeroll. In English I say, “I don’t doubt it. You have your orders.”

And I’m gone the way I came in.

Carl-Erik and I, in the lobby at Berns ten minutes later. He reads Expressen and drinks a mineral water.

“What’s your assessment?” he says, not looking up as I sit to his right.

I open up Aftonbladet . My eye stumbles on something about fucking Estonia and the EU, Jesus wept, just why not let everybody in, you fools?

“Don’t fucking know, do I? He’s nearly retarded, huh? Or maybe that’s how they all behave now, these kids.”

“Nah, certainly not retarded. It’s an act, a defense posture. He’s not all there but he’s well aware of what he’s doing. Kid was abused...”

Boring. I get up, look around the room. Feel a hot rush of anger, perhaps unwarranted. Plop the newspaper where my ass just was.

“So why ask me my assessment? You just gave me yours and you seem to be the more informed of the two of us. Wasting time...”

“Oh come on,” says Carl-Erik nervously. It won’t do to attract attention obviously.

In my peripheral vision I note he almost looks at me. I’ll be docking him for that. But he’s good, Carl-Erik. He’s meticulous, careful.

“Tomorrow is a go,” I say, eyes to the door, now heading toward it.

10/09/03

Moving across the square diagonally toward Hamngatan. I’ll stay in front of the target.

“Nordiska,” I say into my lapel.

Several things will happen now. At a bus stop down the street near the Central Station, the “goth” Nazi will commence defacing the SD poster of the target, in his ridiculous gray trench coat. He will do this as loudly as possible, and we will of course make sure it’s all very well documented. The van will pull up at the side entrance on Regeringsgatan. Carl-Erik and the crazy Serb will remain inside and will move only on my say-so.

Three untraceable phone calls will be placed directly to Stockholm police, the first regarding a fight in progress in the cafeteria at the Kulturhuset. The second regarding a suspicious package in an abandoned taxi at Bromma Airport. The third with respect to an armed man at Djurparken. In the children’s area.

Two bomb threats will be called in, one to the Vasa Museum, and one to the Stockholm Stock Exchange Building.

Just scatter the pigs a bit, not that I’m the least concerned. Useless as they are.

“Plans for the companion?” inquires Carl-Erik.

“Who?” I say.

“Subject’s friend.”

“Not unless there’s interference. But he should be prepared.”

“Right,” says Carl-Erik.

I’m passing the Nordea Bank on my right, some asshole on his cell phone shoulders me. Without a word of apology.

And immediately I’m nearly run down by a flock of terrifying-looking women, all with double-wide prams, bearing down at great speed, blocking the entirety of the sidewalk with smug entitlement. I am forced to press myself against the wall lest I be flattened.

Fucking Stockholm. Fucking women having mongrel half-breed children by the dozen, all on state support, so we might enable their shopping habits. God forbid they should have to work to support their spawn.

“Stand by. Subject has entered Zara.”

I wonder what the fuck Zara is. “Where?”

“Adjacent to the McDonald’s.”

Realize that’s behind me. I pause near a bank of cash machines. There’s an Arab female in front of me, in (I kid you not) a full burka, digging through what could only be described as a beaded coin-purse. Yet another pram, decorated with voodoo black-magic totems, Islamic symbols.

Her ugly child, a little girl, tilts her face up to mine, spits out the Bamse binkie for which she is far too old.

Am I in Libya? Am in a North African medina?

God help us. God help us. This is not Sweden. I stare at the child, willing it sterile. May your womb be dry and barren, child. Her mother turns, and I offer the discolored creature the gift of my smile.

She looks away quickly, returns to her purse, puts her back to me.

No, I can’t stand it. Focus on work. Continue walking...

“Have the twin moved into place.”

Carl-Erik says something in Serbian.

Moving swiftly a half-block, closer now to the entrance to NK, I watch the double enter through the front, baseball hat, grayish Nike sweatshirt, tan work pants. The cameras will have duly noted this for posterity.

Good, good.

“Subject has exited Zara, to you...”

Good, good.

Elsewhere the goth Nazi is defacing yet another poster, at yet another bus station. I wonder idly how useful this will be, but figure the more elements the better, provided they’re contained.

I turn back toward Norrmalmstorg, already feeling that deflated sensation one gets with the completion of a job. Even as I see the pair of tants toddling up the street, might as well be sisters with their stocky lesbian bearing, hardly women at all... even at this moment I’m thinking about my laundry, thinking about what I’ll be doing tomorrow.

Shake this off. Still much to be enjoyed.

Something occurs to me, as the ladies draw nearer, laughing about something. I pause near the column at the department store’s grand entry. A beautiful building, really, completed in 1915 and reflective of early art nouveau architecture, built and designed by Swedes, with good Swedish steel... All this bullshit could be cut short if I just shot the bitch myself, right here and now.

It could be good fun. Sure, a bit whimsical, a touch ad hoc, some improvisation, a little stressful... but think of it: precisely like kiddie-fucker Palme. SAPO would shit themselves. What a glorious scandal.

Allow myself to touch the Sig Sauer near my heart, under my suit jacket. Feel the dense Braille of the grip.

I’m not seriously considering doing it, although nothing would be simpler. Merely daydreaming.

The ladies are almost upon me. Frumps, the both of them. Sexless frumps.

No, nothing so simple as a shot to the head. What we have planned will be so very, very much more entertaining, more colorful.

I can’t help it, I have to tweak it a bit.

I spin and pull open the door to NK, as if I’m rushing through my day, make as if I happen to notice the approaching duo, and then, with maximum gallantry, stand aside and hold the door for them. Again with the wide smile.

As they trudge past me, the target’s eyes flicker across my face, flit away. Her arm brushes my open suit jacket, centimeters from the handgun. I’m pushing it.

As the ladies pass, though, do they thank me? Do they so much as acknowledge my chivalry?

No, they do not.

Because this is Sweden. The cunts have trained themselves out of such behaviors. The men are no longer men, they are lactating, self-hating slaves, forever prepared to flog themselves raw over the sins of their grandfathers.