'Sign it,' said Braxen.'My address here is at the top of the paper.'

She signed it, her hand trembling a little, while Braxen addressed the envelope. Then he sealed the envelope, affixed a stamp showing a picture of their powerless king and gave her the letter.

'If you turn right when you go out of the building and then turn right again, you'll find a postbox.'

'Thank you,' she said.

'Goodbye, Ro- Rebecka. Where can I get hold of you?' 'Nowhere at the moment.'

'Then come back here. In a week's time at the earliest. We cannot expect a reply before then.'

When she had closed the door behind her, Braxen folded the flap with the typewriter on it back again and lifted the mottled cat back on to his lap.

13.

The tall, blond man had a British pa.s.sport, made out in the name of a businessman called Andrew Black. He arrived in Sweden on the fifteenth of October and used the best possible entry, from Copenhagen via hydrofoil to Malmo, where the pa.s.sport police, if they are even on duty, spend most of their time yawning and drinking coffee.

In Malmo he bought a train ticket to Stockholm, slept soundly as the cold Swedish rain hammered against the compartment window, arrived in Stockholm in the morning and took a taxi to the six-room apartment in south Stockholm which a dummy operation of ULAG's had long since rented as a visitor's apartment for its business contacts. The first unpleasantness he experienced in Sweden was the lengthy wait for a cab outside the railway station. Apart from that, he had met with no problems; nowhere had he had to show more than the front of his pa.s.sport, he had not given his name to anyone, nor had anyone opened his bags. These had false bottoms and their contents were highly interesting. And yet a normal customs official, not used to anything more than rummaging about for booze or tobacco, would certainly not have noticed anything unusual.

At lunchtime he went out and ate at something that called itself a 'bar', noting that the food was revoltingly bad and astonishingly expensive. Then he bought some Swedish newspapers and took them back home. After a while he found that he was able to understand the text surprisingly well.

His real name was Reinhard Heydt and he was a South African, brought up in a family speaking four languages - Dutch, Afrikaans, English and Danish. Later on he had learned to speak French and German fluently and could get by in half a dozen other languages. He had been to school in England, but his practical education had been paramilitary. At first he had fought in the Congo, and later he had been on the losing side in Biafra. He had also been involved in the coup in Guinea, and after being in the Portuguese intelligence services for a few years, he had joined an irregular special unit fighting the Frelimo guerrillas in Mozambique. From there he had been recruited into ULAG.

Heydt had been trained as a terrorist in camps in Rhodesia and Angola. The training had been extremely hard and the slightest sign of physical or mental weakness had meant an immediate transfer to administrative a.s.signments. Treachery or cowardice was punished by death.

ULAG had been formed and organized by private interests with financial support from the governments of at least three countries. Its ultimate purpose was to form a highly efficient terrorist group, which could then be brought in to support the increasingly wavering white regimes in southern Africa. External contact lines were few, but they did exist. There was, for example, a solemn club in London where a job could be ordered from ULAG. Up to now only one of that kind had been carried out, the one that Gunvald Larsson had happened to witness. What otherwise made the organization's activities so frightening and inexplicable was that they had been carried out as exercises.

The terrorist groups quite simply had to prove that they were competent, but in the process they were able to achieve another goal - the creation of distrust and general political unease. In this they had succeeded, for the coup in Malawi had led to a tremendous quarrel between the three countries involved, with promising military and political complications. The a.s.sa.s.sination in India had also brought about great political unrest; and in Peking and Moscow, intelligence services still found it difficult to believe that neither the CIA nor the Thieu regime had been behind the mortar attack in Vietnam.

The people who had created ULAG were perfectly aware of the problems that automatically follow the use of terror as a political weapon. It either develops into a situation such as the one in Ulster, where the activists are badly trained and armed (no one is especially impressed when an unsophisticated Irish labourer blows himself to kingdom come because he fails to understand the construction of a bomb or how to handle it), or as in the numerous Palestinian actions, it leads to the death of the terrorists because their opponents are so well equipped and so utterly uncompromising.

Consequently, what they were trying to create was a group that never failed and that, even if not large, was truly in a position to create terror.

At present ULAG contained no more than a hundred men, consisting of ten activist groups of four men each, ten in reserve and another twenty in training. The rest were in the administration, which was kept to an absolute minimum for reasons of security. In the beginning, ULAG's central core had consisted of men who had seen action in Biafra and Angola, but even that group was multinational, and since men the organization had been reinforced with people from many countries, including some j.a.panese of an ultra-nationalistic variety who felt that they were serving their country in this way.

Reinhard Heydt had been at the top of his training cla.s.s and could justifiably regard himself as one of the ten most dangerous men in the world, a thought that tickled him enormously. He was otherwise an educated man of attractive appearance who very much enjoyed his profession.

Three days after Heydt, the two j.a.panese in the group came to Stockholm. They had come via Finland and arrived on one of the big pleasure boats from Mariehamn. One of the pa.s.sport police on duty indifferently stamped their false pa.s.sports as he listened with weary distaste to one of them asking for the nearest p.o.r.nographic movie of beautiful Swedish girls.

That question about beautiful Swedish girls also caused the customs official to scribble a hasty chalk mark on their luggage.

'We should have some G.o.dd.a.m.n brochure in j.a.panese and English with addresses of wh.o.r.es and s.e.x clubs in it We could just hand them out to j.a.ps and other idiots,' said the customs man to his colleague.

'That's racist,' shouted a youth in line. 'Don't you realize that? It's against the law to discriminate between people because of race and colour!'

As they were arguing about this, the second j.a.panese also got his luggage through without a search. He was a large man whose hands were as hard as boards.

The two j.a.panese had been involved in the Indian affair, but not in Latin America. Reinhard Heydt knew they were enormously competent - cold and ruthless and utterly reliable. They were boring to live with, though. They seldom said anything, just sat playing an incomprehensible game with a lot of small blocks. Their faces were so expressionless that it was impossible to make out who was winning or losing, or even whether the game had ended or was to be continued the next day.

In contrast to these two, Heydt had never been to Stockholm before, so during those first days he moved around town quite a bit to form an impression of the place as a whole. He rented a car, using the papers that identified him as the British citizen Andrew Black.

A week later he received a large crate from the freight terminal; it had been sent care of general delivery. As it had obviously come through customs without being examined, he had no need to bother with the two crates that followed a short while later. These would be returned to the sender after a certain period of time. A little later he visited an office in Kungsholm, identified himself as a representative of a Dutch contractor and bought the complete plans of the city subway, sewage, electric and gas supply systems. This contact had been established beforehand; the man had been contacted well in advance by letter and had replied submitting an estimate.

On the thirty-first of October, Reinhard Heydt had already been in Sweden for seventeen days. The two j.a.panese went on playing their strange game, with breaks to go out into the kitchen and cook strange food. They appeared to buy the ingredients in ordinary stores in town.

All the material was ready at hand, and there were three more weeks to go before the senator's visit. Reinhard Heydt drove out to the international airport at Arlanda, looked at it without interest and then drove back into town. The route along which the famous American would be transported appeared to be fairly obvious.

After Heydt had pa.s.sed the Royal Palace, he swung up and parked on Slottsbacken. Then he took out his Stockholm map and, as any other tourist might have done, went down to Logrden steps, stopped and looked around for a long time.

This was a good place, that was clear, whatever method he chose. He had more or less decided to use a bomb, but there was the risk that the King might be killed at the same time. No one had mentioned a king, and in some way Heydt could not reconcile himself to the idea. There was something special about a king. He looked at the palace again and thought it a ma.s.sive and ugly heap of stones. As he had already crossed the road, he decided to leave the car where he had parked it and take a short walk through the Old City. This was the only part of Stockholm he liked.

Reinhard Heydt walked on until he came to Stortorget. He inspected Brunkeberg Pump and then walked eastward along Kopmangatan, when suddenly a woman came out of an alley right in front of him and fell into step ahead of him.

Scandinavian women were supposed to be tall and blonde, he thought. His Danish mother had been. But this one was noticeably short, with quite broad shoulders. She had straight fair hair and was wearing red wellies, jeans and a black duffle coat, her hands thrust deeply into the pockets. She was walking with her head down, with determined steps, at exactly the same speed as he.

As he continued walking a few yards behind her along Bollhusgatan, she suddenly turned her head, as if she had felt she was being followed, and looked at him, her eyes screwed up and as blue as his own. She regarded him searchingly, looked at the map he was still holding folded in his hand, then took a step to one side so that he could pa.s.s.

When he was back in the car he saw her again, striding down towards Skeppsbron. Once she appeared to glance over in his direction, a swift and observant look. For some reason he again thought of his Danish mother, who was still alive and lived near Pietermaritzburg. When they finished this job, he would have to go and see her.

That same day he called up the group's radio specialist, a Frenchman who had long been in readiness in Copenhagen. Heydt told him that he was to come to Stockholm on the fourteenth of November at the latest and that the method used would be essentially the same as the last time.

On Monday of the following week, Reinhard Heydt was so bored with his silent, constantly game-playing j.a.panese colleagues that he decided to try and find a woman. This in itself was a break in routine; he had never before had anything to do with women while preparing for action. Now searching about for one, he found that the great numbers of prost.i.tutes in Stockholm depressed him, especially the number of girls in their early teens who seemed willing to do almost anything to get drugs.

After observing this dismal traffic for a while, he visited one of the better hotels in town and went into the bar.

Heydt never drank, but occasionally enjoyed a gla.s.s of tomato juice and tabasco. As he sipped his drink, he thought about what he wanted: preferably a fairly tall, ash-blonde woman who was twenty-five years old. He himself was thirty, but twenty-five was a kind of idee fixe of his. What he definitely could not contemplate was any kind of professional lady or one of those who worked for an establishment. He no longer believed in beautiful Swedish girls; they seemed to be a myth, just another of the many lies the regime had spread as propaganda.

As he was drinking his second gla.s.s of spiked tomato juice, a woman came in and sat down at the other end of the bar. She seemed to be drinking orange juice with a red cherry in it and a neatly sliced piece of lemon on the edge of the gla.s.s.

They looked at each other a couple of times, disclosing their mutual interest, and Heydt decided to ask the bartender if he might buy her the next drink. The answer was yes. Shortly after that the stool next to her became vacant. He looked questioningly at it, and again she nodded.

After he had moved over, he entertained her for half an hour or so in Scandinavian. He told her he was a Danish engineer named Reinhard Jorgensen - it was always simplest to stick to the truth as closely as possible, and his mother's maiden name had been Jorgensen. She said her name was Ruth Salomonsson. He at once asked her how old she was, and she replied that she was twenty-five. She was almost perfect; her hair was not blonde but ash-coloured and her eyes were blue. She was tall, slim and well built.

It took him about fifteen minutes to discover that she was in the bar on exactly the same errand as he was. Then it was just a matter of going out and asking the hall porter to call them a cab.

As was common with women in bars, Ruth Salomonsson had a woman friend with her. The friend was talking to a man at a table in the bar, and as they waited for the cab to come, Heydt chatted politely with her.

He had made a good choice and had a very pleasant evening. It was not until some hours later that he filled a gap by asking a question. He had told her a little about his own affairs and travels. Now he enquired, 'What do you do for a living?'

She lit a cigarette from his, blew out a cloud of smoke and said, 'I'm with the police.'

'Police?' he said. 'You work for the police?'

'Yes. It's called police a.s.sistant'

'Is it interesting work?'

'It's not always particularly exciting,' she said. 'I work at what's called the Investigation Bureau.'

He said nothing, feeling surprise more than anything else, but in some way she now became slightly more interesting in his eyes.

'I purposely didn't mention it before,' she added. 'Some people react in such a peculiar way if you tell them you're a policewoman.'

'That's silly,' said Heydt, pulling her towards him.

He did not get back to his j.a.panese until about seven the next morning. They looked at him reproachfully, then went back to bed.

14.

Gunvald Larsson was looking at his new suit Would it be a bad omen if he wore it on the great day? Would he be showered with the obnoxious senator's intestines or something similar? Not impossible - and in defiance he decided there and then to wear the suit the following Thursday.

Today he put on his ordinary clothes - fur-lined jacket, brown trousers and heavy Danish walking shoes with crepe soles - looked in the mirror and shook his head. Then he went off to work.

Gunvald Larsson did not like getting older. He would soon be fifty, and wondered more and more often what the point of his life was. It had been fun squandering most of his inheritance, memorable both for himself as well as others. He had quite liked being in the navy and even more in the merchant navy, but why on earth had he become a policeman, voluntarily putting himself in a position in society where he was often forced to act against his own convictions?

The answer was simple. It had been the only job he could get with his odd education, and at the time he had also hoped to be of some use. But had he succeeded?

And why had he not married? There had been plenty of opportunities but now it was virtually too late.

Anyhow, what a time to be asking that sort of question.

He parked the car when he arrived and then took the lift up to the Violent Crimes Squad, where the special group had its headquarters. The rooms were decrepit, the walls were peeling, and the building itself appeared to be in the process of collapsing from the pressure of the ostentatious new police headquarters growing up just outside the windows.

Gunvald Larsson looked at the wall dock. Three minutes past eight. It was the fourteenth of November, exactly a week until the great day.

The headquarters had four rooms at its disposal. Martin Beck was usually there, and Gunvald Larsson and Einar Ronn were nearly always there, as were Benny Skacke and Fredrik Melander, who was otherwise a chief inspector in the Fraud Squad but had many years' experience in both Murder and Violent Crimes.

Melander was a strange man and an invaluable a.s.set. His memory functioned like a computer, only better, and by letting all information pa.s.s through him they were able to guard against diverse faults, duplicated orders and much else. Personally, he was a tall, even-tempered man, slightly older than the others, who mostly sat studying his papers and fiddling with his pipe, and if he was not to be found at his desk, then he would be in the men's room, a fact half of Stockholm's police were aware of and considered hugely amusing.

Gunvald Larsson nodded at Ronn before going on in to Martin Beck, who was sitting on his desk, dangling his legs and talking on the telephone as he leafed through a thick bundle of reports.

'Goodbye,' he said, putting down the receiver.

Gunvald Larsson looked at him enquiringly.

'Air force,' said Martin Beck.

'Ugh,' said Gunvald Larsson.

'Yes, that's what I was trying to tell them, only a little more politely. They wanted to know if we need more than one division of fighter planes.'

'And what did you say?'

'I happened to say that we didn't need any aeroplanes at all.' 'You said that?'

'Yes. The general got a bit steamed up. 'Aeroplane" is evidently a dirty word.'

'It's like calling the deck of a boat the floor.'

'Oh, that bad, is it?' said Martin Beck. 'I'll have to apologize to him if he calls again.'

He glanced at the date indicator on his watch and said, 'Your friends from ULAG don't seem to have put in an appearance.'

Control of the borders and incoming traffic from abroad had been tremendously thorough during the last week or two.

'Mmm.'

'Was that a statement?' asked Martin Beck.

Gunvald Larsson strode up and down the room a couple of times. Finally he said, 'I think we should proceed on the a.s.sumption that they're here.'

'But there must be several of them. Do you really mean they've managed to get in without our catching even one of them?'

'It seems peculiar,' said Gunvald Larsson, 'but...' He fell silent.

'Of course they may have come in before the border checks began,' said Martin Beck.

'Yes,' said Gunvald Larsson, 'that's a possibility.'

As if to steer the course of the conversation in another direction, Martin Beck asked, 'Did you see any interesting films yesterday?'

Gunvald Larsson had been detailed to study a number of films the Security Service had acquired of state visits.

'Yes,' said Gunvald Larsson. 'I noticed that Nixon travelled in an open car through Belgrade with t.i.to. Same thing in Dublin -Nixon and de Valera paraded in an ancient Rolls-Royce with an open top. As far as I could see on the film, there was only one security man. On the other hand, about half the country was barricaded off when Kissinger was in Rome.'

'Did they show the great cla.s.sic, too? The Pope in Jerusalem?'

'Yes, but unfortunately I'd seen that before.'

The Pope's visit to Jerusalem had been handled by the Jordanian security service, who had messed things up to a degree that probably lacked any precedent in the history of the world. Not even Stig Malm could have achieved anything like it The telephone rang.

Yes. Beck.'

'Hi,' said the chief of the regular police. 'Have you seen the papers I sent up?'