The Nightmare

  “I realize it might be impossible,” Joona says.

  “Seriously, it is,” Kaj replies.

  Joona thanks him for his time and goes to Disa, who is sitting on the rim of a fountain waiting for him. She lays her cheek on his shoulder as he sits down beside her. Just as he’s putting an arm around her, he remembers Robert Riessen’s words about his brother: If not even Axel could figure it out, no one can.

  72

  the riddle

  While Joona is quickly walking up on the Bragevägen sidewalk, he hears children happily yelling on the grounds of the German School.

  He rings Axel’s doorbell and hears the melodious chime inside, but no one answers, and after waiting for a while, he decides to walk around the house. Suddenly he hears a screeching noise. He can see people standing in the shadow of a tree, and he pauses at a distance. A girl holding a violin stands on the marble patio. She looks about fifteen years old. Her hair is extremely short, and he can see some drawings she’s inked on her arms. Axel Riessen is with her, nodding and listening carefully as she drags the bow across the strings. Her movements look awkward, as if she’s holding the instrument for the very first time. Perhaps this is Axel’s daughter, or even his grandchild, because he watches her with such a gentle, curious expression.

  The bow crosses the strings at the wrong angle and elicits a hissing, whining sound.

  “It’s not in tune,” the girl says as an excuse for the terrible noise.

  She smiles and, with care, hands the instrument back to Axel.

  “Playing the violin means listening,” Axel says in a calm, friendly fashion. “The music is already inside you. You just release it into the world.”

  He sets the violin to his own shoulder and begins to play the introductory melody to “Séguedille” from Bizet’s Carmen, then stops and holds out the violin to demonstrate.

  “Now I’m going to tune these strings a little strangely, here … and here,” he says, and he turns the pegs a few times in different directions.

  “Why are—”

  “Now the violin is completely out of tune,” he continues. “And if I’d only learned how to play mechanically with exact fingering, then I would sound like this.”

  He plays “Séguedille” again, and it is so terrible it’s almost unrecognizable.

  “How pretty!” she says, joking.

  “However, if you listen to the strings …” he says as he taps the E string. “Hear that? It’s much too low, but that makes no difference at all. You compensate by moving your finger farther up the fingerboard.”

  Joona watches Axel Riessen put the violin back on his shoulder and play the piece again on the falsely tuned violin. He seems to use gymnastic fingering, but the piece is perfectly in tune.

  “You’re a magician!” The girl laughs and claps her hands.

  “Hello,” Joona says. He walks up and holds out his hand. Axel gathers the violin and bow together in his left hand and then shakes Joona’s hand. The girl shyly does the same.

  He looks at Axel with his mistuned violin.

  “That’s impressive.”

  Axel shakes his head.

  “As a matter of fact, I haven’t played for thirty-four years.” His voice sounds stiff as he says this.

  “Do you believe that?” Joona asks the girl.

  She nods and then she says mysteriously, “Don’t you see the glow around him?”

  “This is Beverly,” Axel says in a low voice. “Beverly Andersson.”

  Beverly gives Axel a big smile, and then she simply walks away between the trees.

  Joona nods at Axel. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Sorry about earlier, when I took off like that,” Axel says. He begins to retune the violin. “But something came up.”

  “Not to worry—I just came back.”

  Joona watches Axel, who, in turn, watches the girl pick some flowering weeds from the shaded lawn.

  “Do we have a vase inside?” she calls out.

  “In the kitchen,” Axel replies.

  She carries her tiny bouquet of dandelions—white balls of fluff—into the kitchen.

  “That’s her favorite flower,” Axel says as he listens closely to the G string. He adjusts the peg slightly and then sets the violin on the mosaic table.

  “I’d like you to take a look at this,” Joona says, and he takes out the photograph from the folder.

  They sit down at the table. Axel takes a pair of glasses from his front pocket and studies the photograph thoroughly.

  “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 th
e 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 Béla Bartók’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 Bartók’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 Bartók 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.

  “What did you find out?” Axel asks as he stands up.

  “What?” Joona is startled out of his thoughts.

  “Could you determine the date of that meeting?”

  “Yes.”

  Axel tries to catch Joona’s eyes.

  “And?” Axel persists.

  “I have to go,” Joona says.

  “Did they meet after the arrest warrant for al-Bashir? They can’t have! I have to know if that’s what they’ve done!”

  Joona looks directly into Axel’s eyes. His eyes are calm and bright.

  73

  one last question

  Saga Bauer lies on her stomach on the fluffy white rug. Her eyes are closed as Stefan slowly kisses her back. Her light hair spreads like a waterfall onto the floor. Stefan’s face feels warm as it moves across her skin.

  Keep going, she thinks.

  His lips are light, tickling brushstrokes between her shoulder blades. She forces herself to keep still and shudders from pleasure.

  Carl Unander-Scharin’s erotic duet for cello and mezzo-soprano flows from the speakers of her music system. The voices of the woman and the cello cross rhythmically and repetitively like entwined trickles in a dark stream. Saga lies completely still, desire rising in her body. She is breathing through a half-open mouth and she licks her lips.

  His hands glide over her waist, around her hips, and then effortlessly he lifts her buttocks.

  No one I’ve ever met before has touched me so softly, Saga thinks as she smiles to herself.

  She hears her own moan as she feels the touch of his tongue.

  He carefully turns her body over. Impressions of stripes are left on her skin from the rug.

  “Keep going,” she whispers.

  “Or you’ll shoot me,” he says.

  She nods and smiles openly. Wisps of Stefan’s black hair have curled around his face, and his narrow ponytail is hanging over one of her breasts.

  “Come, come,” Saga whispers.

  She pulls his face down to hers and kisses him and her tongue meets his, warm and wet.

  He quickly wriggles out of his jeans and lays down naked over her. She lifts her legs and feels him push inside. She moans a long moan and then breathes more quickly. They hesitate for a moment to marvel at the feeling of being beyond nearness. Stefan pushes softly. His narrow hips move carefully. Saga runs her fingers over his shoulder blades, his back, his buttocks.

  Then the telephone rings. Of course, her thought snaps out. From the heap of clothes on the sofa, her cell phone sounds persistently with ZZ Top’s “Blue Jeans Blues.” It is well buried beneath her white linen chemise, underwear, and jeans pulled inside out.

  “Let it ring,” she whispers.

  “It’s your work phone,” he says.

  “Fuck it, it’s not important,” she mumbles and tries to hold him tight to her.

  But he pulls out, gets to his knees, and searches through her jeans pockets while the phone nags insistently. Finally, he turns her jeans upside down and the phone falls out. It’s stopped ringing. Then a small ding announces there’s a message on the voice mail.

  Twenty minutes later, Saga is running through the hallway
of the police station, the tips of her hair still damp from her quick shower. Her body still vibrates, desirous and unsatisfied. Her underwear and jeans feel uncomfortable, and not quite right.

  Anja Larsson’s plump face pokes up over her computer, questioning, as Saga runs to Joona’s office. He waits in the middle of the floor. His gray eyes give her a sharp glance and she feels a shudder of unease.

  “Close the door,” he says grimly.

  She shuts it immediately and turns back to him. She’s quietly panting.

  “Axel Riessen remembers every single piece of music he’s ever heard. Every note from every instrument in any symphony orchestra.”

  “And?”

  “He knew immediately which piece the string quartet was playing. It was Béla Bartók’s Second String Quartet.”

  “Okay, you were right. Now we know what they were playing, but we—”

  “This photograph was taken in November 2009,” Joona says sharply.

  “So those devils ignored the embargo. They were doing a deal for arms,” she says bitterly.

  “Right.”

  “And they planned that the ammunition was to be siphoned into Darfur,” she whispers.

  Joona nods while the muscles in his jaw tighten. “Carl Palmcrona should never have been there. Not with Pontus Salman, not with anyone—”

  “And here they are together, caught in a photograph,” Saga says triumphantly. “Toasting a deal with Raphael Guidi and al-Haji.”

  “That’s right.” Joona meets Saga’s summer-blue eyes.

  “They say the really big fish always get away,” Saga murmurs. “People have always said it … most people realize it … but it’s true. The big ones almost always go free pretty much.”

  They silently gaze down at the photograph again. Four people in a private box. The champagne. The expressions on their faces. The musicians playing on Paganini’s instruments at the Alte Oper. “Now we’ve figured out the first riddle,” Saga says and takes a deep breath. “A dirty deal to get arms to Sudan.”