Lars Kepler - The Nightmare

“When was this taken?” he asks quickly.

“We don’t know, but it was suggested this was in the spring of 2008,” Joona replies.

“All right.” Axel looks much more relaxed immediately.

“Do you recognize these people?” Joona asks calmly.

“Of course,” Axel says. “Palmcrona, Pontus Salman, Raphael Guidi, and… Agathe al-Haji.”

“I need your help in one specific area. Could you take a good look at the musicians in the background?”

Axel looks up at Joona speculatively and then down again at the photograph.

“The Tokyo String Quartet-they’re very good,” he says in a neutral voice.

“Well, the thing I’m wondering about is… I’ve been thinking about this picture and wondering if it is possible for a knowledgeable person to tell… just by looking at the picture… which piece they’re playing.”

“That’s an interesting question.”

“Would there be, even remotely, a possibility for an educated guess? Kaj Samuelsson didn’t think so, and when your brother took a look, he said it was completely impossible.”

Joona leans forward, his eyes smooth and warm in the shade.

“Your brother was adamant that if you couldn’t solve this riddle, no one could.”

A smile plays at the edges of Axel’s mouth.

“He said that, did he?”

“Yes,” Joona says. “Though I’m not sure what he meant by that.”

“Nor am I.”

“Still, take a close look at this picture. I have a magnifying glass-”

“You want to know when this meeting took place, don’t you,” Axel states in a suddenly grave tone.

Joona nods and takes a magnifying glass out of his briefcase.

“You should be able to see their fingers clearly,” Joona says.

Joona sits back quietly and watches Axel minutely examine the photograph. He thinks if this had been taken in 2008, as they’d been told, his intuition had been wrong. But if these people had met after the arrest order in March 2009, the photograph was proof of criminal activity.

“Yes, I see the positions of their fingers,” Axel says slowly.

“Could you guess which notes they’re playing?” Joona asks expectantly.

Axel sighs, hands the photograph and the magnifying glass back to Joona, and then sings four notes aloud in a soft but clear voice as if it emanated from inside himself. Then he takes up the violin and plays two high, trembling notes.

Joona Linna stands up.

“And this is no joke-”

Axel Riessen looks directly into Joona’s eyes and shakes his head. “No. Martin Beaver is playing a third C, Kikuei is playing a second C, Kazuhide Isomura has a rest, and Clive is playing a four-note pizzicato. That’s what I sang, E, A, A, and C.”

Joona writes this down. He asks, “How exact is your guess?”

“It’s not a guess,” Axel replies.

“Does this combination appear in many pieces? I mean, just by identifying these notes can you deduce the exact piece the Tokyo String Quartet is playing at this moment in this picture?”

“This combination is found in only one place,” Axel replies.

“How do you know that?”

Axel turns away and looks away at a window in the house. Shadows of lacy leaves reflect on the glass.

“I’m sorry, please continue,” Joona says.

“Of course, I have not heard every piece the quartet has played,” Axel says with a shrug.

“But, again, you are sure this exact combination of notes is found in only one specific composition?” Joona asks again.

“I know of only one,” Axel replies calmly. “Measure 156 in the first movement of Bela Bartok’s Second String Quartet.”

Axel picks up the violin and puts it to his shoulder.

“Tranquillo… this movement is so wonderfully peaceful, almost like a lullaby. Listen to the first voice,” he says as he begins to play.

Axel’s fingers move tenderly, the notes quiver, the music sings, light and soft. After four measures, he stops.

“Both violins follow each other. Same note, different octaves,” he explains. “It’s almost too beautiful, but then the cello’s A-minor chord makes the violin’s notes dissonant… even though they’re not experienced as dissonant because they’re harmonics, which…”

He stops talking and puts down the violin.

Joona watches him.

“So you’re absolutely certain these musicians are playing Bartok’s Second String Quartet?” Joona says quietly.

“Yes.”

Joona, suddenly jittery, gets up and walks across the patio to stop by the lilac-bush hedge. This is everything he needs to determine the time of the meeting.

He smiles to himself, and immediately smoothes away the triumph with his hand. He turns back, takes a red apple from the bowl on the table, and meets Axel’s questioning gaze.

“So yes, you’re absolutely sure,” Joona confirms again.

Axel nods and Joona gives him the apple. He turns aside to pull his cell phone from his jacket to call Anja.

“Anja, this is a rush-”

“We’re going to take a sauna together this weekend,” Anja replies.

“I need your help.”

“I know.” Anja giggles.

Joona tries to hide the tension in his voice.

“I need you to check the repertoire of the Tokyo String Quartet for the past ten years.”

“I’ve already done that.”

“Specifically what they played at the Alte Oper in Frankfurt during that time?”

“Yes, they went there annually, in fact.”

“Have they ever played the Bartok Second String Quartet?” There’s a pause as she checks her information.

“Yes, Opus 17. They’ve played it once.”

“Opus 17,” Joona repeats and meets Axel’s eyes. Axel nods.

“What?” Anja asks.

“So when did they play that piece?”

“The thirteenth of November 2009.”

“Are you absolutely sure?”

The people in the photograph met eight months after the arrest warrant for Sudan’s president, Joona thinks. Pontus Salman lied about the date. They met in November 2009. And all of this carnage has come from that-the brutal deaths of so many and perhaps even more in the future.

Joona reaches out and absentmindedly brushes some lilac blossoms, and he can smell the barbecue on an outdoor grill in a yard somewhere. He thinks he must call Saga Bauer about this breakthrough.

“Was that it?” Anja says on the other end.

“Yes.”

“Can you use the little word?”

“Oh, yes… Kiitokseksi saat pusun,” Joona says in Finnish. As thanks, I’ll give you a kiss.

Joona ends the call.

Pontus Salman lied, Joona thinks again. There were no exceptions or loopholes to a complete weapons embargo.

But Agathe al-Haji wanted to buy ammunition. And the others wanted money. None of them could have cared less about human rights or international law.

Pontus Salman thought that one truth-openly pointing himself out in the photo-would obscure the big lie: the date they met.

Joona pictures Pontus Salman in his mind’s eye: an oddly placid man with no emotions in his face.

Arms deals. Arms deals and the money they bring, the whisper in his head tells him. All of this is due to weapons smuggling: the photograph, the blackmail attempt, the dead people.

He pictures Saga Bauer standing up after their conversation with Salman. She’d left the marks of her five fingers on his desk as a silent testimony.

March 2009. That’s when the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir for direct involvement in the extermination of three ethnic groups in Darfur. At that moment, all the usual supplies of ammunition from the rest of the world stopped. Sudan’s army still had their weapons-their machine guns and assault rifles-but they would be running low on, and soon be out of, ammunition. The strangled supply would strangle the militia in Darfur. Except these four-Carl Palmcrona, Pontius Salman, Raphael Guidi, and Agathe al-Haji-had chosen to put themselves above international law.