The Last Voyage of the Yankee Seas E-Book

Paul Werner

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Deutsch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Seitenzahl: 519

Beschreibung

Crime scene: Sweden and the Baltic. A harmless enough accident puts Laura on the scent of a murder whose traces lead back to those nineteen-eighties, which risked seeing the Cold War go red hot all of a sudden: from NATO´s double-track agreement, SS20 and Pershing cruise missiles, Strategic Defence Initiative, also known as Star Wars, all the way to the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the implosion of the USSR - those were the catchphrases of that turbulent decade. For neutral, yet politically rollercoasting Sweden beyond ABBA and Pippi L., it all boiled down to the bizarre episode known as "Whiskey on the Rocks," aka the grounding of S-363, by whose sombre, silent shadow Laura and her sister Solitaire are being guided to the nest of the Grey Albatrosses, a Rotary of the international crime élite presided over by the mysterious Schramm. As always, the name Laura Forster vouches for exciting as well as humorous entertainment, seasoned, this time, with an unabashed homage to the unique biotope of the Stockholm and Åland Island skerries, Morlockian submariners and the endangered species of Tall Ship sailors.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

First Chapter

Castle Cormorant

The Stalker

Dai Paparazzi

Second Chapter

Rain Woman

Thelma and Louise

Helle's Submania

Third Chapter

The Boat

The Cave Dweller

Trapped

Fourth Chapter

Inside the Anaconda

The Makarov Man

Damsel of the Deep

Fifth Chapter

Meet the Morlocks

Scarface

The Kneeling Maiden

Sixth Chapter

Birds of a Feather

The Organ Pipes

Whiskey on the Rocks

Seventh Chapter

Torpedo Away!

A Family Caucus

High Rollers

Eighth Chapter

The Jilted Bride

Villa Villekulla

The Ambush

Ninth Chapter

Court News

Jennifer Juniper

The Wreck

Tenth Chapter

Unter den Linden

The Eight Sisters

North by Northwest

Eleventh Chapter

The Cuckoo's Egg

Death to the Dragon!

Piping the Side

Twelfth Chapter

Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!

Don't Call Us

Nine Tomcat Lives

FIRST CHAPTER

1. Castle Cormorant

For a brief moment, the man in his open, clinker-built fishing boat interrupts mending his green net and raises his head like a setter dog whose pointed ears happen to pick up the remote soft flurry of goose wings flapping and, basing itself on both instinct and many years' experience of hunting together with its master, tries to assess direction and distance of the prey. The wafts of mist which have been drifting across the glistening grey skerries during these early morning hours like so many impenetrable grey cotton-wool swabs are now thinning out, thus clearly manifesting their readiness to hand this unique landscape in the no-man's-land between soil and sea back to its proper owners, albeit grudgingly.

The grey-bearded fisherman lays needle and yarn back into the small box reserved for such utensils and tosses that part of the net he has been fiddling with till now to while away the dead hours of waiting across the bows of his wooden boat, gently rocking at anchor. Then he takes a sip of lukewarm tea from his thermos, turns up the collar of his old, scuffed oilskin jacket and pulls his shiny cap deeper onto his forehead. Hopefully, its peak will shade most of his face as soon as the shy rays of the tainted autumn sun manage to penetrate both clouds and fog.

Greybeard is recovering from a restless night with ghouls and spectres galore. What with his permanent struggle to make ends meet, not the first of its kind by a long chalk. The noises of battle frequently haunting this potentially calm and peaceful environment do little to alleviate matters. The Swedish armed forces see to that by more or less regularly carrying out combined manoeuvres and indulging in naval target practice in the skerries round Karlskrona both day and night. Obviously, the latest developments of the local Bofors gun factory need testing under all kinds of conditions before being delivered to belligerent parties all over the world.

Which is why, every now and again, ballistic shock waves will roll across the archipelago with its enchanted coves and winding fairways at high speed, shaking the beams and boards of his two-storey wooden house at the southwestern tip of Sturkö island. More often than not, they even blow the door open and snuff out the burning candles he prefers to bulbs during autumn and winter to keep his electricity bill down.

Last night, though, the noise was particularly horrendous. At about ten pm., with the late-night newscast and weather forecast just over, there was a Godalmighty bumping sound from some place further east. The short ensuing silence was broken by the roar of a ship's diesel engines howling and whining like a tormented creature in great pain. On and on it went, in endlessly repeated, yet apparently futile fits and starts, till early dawn. So bad was it that Greybeard, though blessed with the proverbial patience of an oyster, decided he would concoct a rather sharply-worded missile of a complaint note and send it to the Naval Command in Stockholm. Enough is enough.

The meagre proceeds Greybeard manages to wrest from these shallow fishing grounds thanks to years and years of observation, excellent local knowledge and expert handling of his weirs and nets barely keeps his folk and himself afloat, financially speaking. Some flat fish here, some sprat there, some crabs and shrimps, the odd white fish which had erroneously strayed into this uninviting territory – that's about it. On occasions few and far between, he also comes eye to eye with a representative of the Baltic Sea herring species his fellow-countrymen call strömmingar. A marine creature way inferior to its Atlantic cousin, the so-called sill, the strömming is smaller and of much fluffier flesh. On top of that, as you get further up North in the Gulf of Bothnia, its receding spinal column makes it increasingly resemble an eel rather than a herring. None of us wishing to cast any aspersions on Swedish culinary prowess, it may be noted in passing that the worthy albeit erstwhile penniless successors to the mighty Norsemen managed, over the centuries, to make shift with what little ice-covered surf and permafrosted turf would yield at times. Absolutely plausible, with that sort of background that, next to those outrageously insipid köttbullar, or meatballs, the strömming, despite its natural shortcomings, should come to occupy, as it does, such a prominent place on the short list of the most popular Swedish national dishes. It happened to rise to that status in the shape and from of the famous sur strömming, or marinated herring. Admittedly, an acquired taste you and I probably might not care to acquire, in the first place.

In view of the way it's prepared, the term "marinated" is a bit of a misnomer, likely to confound the resulting dish with such venerable post-debauchery evergreens as Bismarck herrings or roly-poly. When the chips are down, the sur strömming cannot boast to have been pickled in some vinegar liquid enriched with a secret array of herbs collected by vestal virgins on a moonless night. In fact, it's but the result of a blatant process of combined decomposition and fermentation not altogether unlike that a dead human body will undergo six feet down. Squeezed into coffin-like cans and buried in the ground, it – the herring, not the corpse – will spend entire weeks and months in splendid isolation and neglect. Instead of leaving it at that and let nature do what it does best, the fish, by now having assumed an intermediate aggregate state somewhere between solid and liquid, and obviously stinking to high heaven into the bargain, will be disinterred and served on a slab of crisp knäckebröd with a generous helping of fresh onions to drown both the smell and the taste. The mere thought that Ikea subsidiaries abroad, despite their missionary zeal and zest to spread the Gospel, not only of Swedish furniture and food all over the diaspora, have so far been reticent in pressing the sur strömming upon a wider public, should be sobering.

There were times, now, many decades ago, when Greybeard was smitten by the feverish gold rush that had taken possession of many of his fellow-countrymen, blindly following the call of there she blows emanating from the bare and barren skerries of the Skagerrak coast yonder and being blown all over the country by the fierce Westerlies. The call, albeit reminiscent of Nantucket whalers, would not be hailing the passing-by of Moby Dick and his roving companions, but announce, on a much more modest scale, the return of the equally unpredictable Atlantic herring, or sill. This vagrant species popping up and disappearing again in irritatingly chaotic cycles used to trigger Klondykian treks East to West, the amazing dimensions of which can still be gleaned all along an iron, gale-swept coast North of Gothenburg. Tiny, multicoloured wooden huts and houses would spring up on the bare skerries like tough, undemanding mountain pines that have learned to find a precarious foothold in every nook and cranny of their surroundings. Hugging each other like infants in a storm, they have survived to this very day. Most of these former fishermen's cabins have long since been converted into popular summer houses for well-off townsfolk, Swedish or otherwise.

With a bit of skill and lots of luck, a man could make a small fortune in the course of a fishing season whose exact duration would be anybody's guess. In fact, you could earn enough money for the rest of your natural life, provided you did not fall into the hands of dishonest friends and counsellors used to strip naive fools of their money by, for instance, promising mind-boggling returns on trashy stocks or securities.

The mere memory of it all makes the Greybeard of Sturkö spit in the water with disgust. Easy come, easy go, is what they say. Well, it hadn't come half as easy as all that but quickly evaporated into thin air, none the less.

Hence, instead of living the life of Reilly somewhere in the Caribbean, basking in the infinitely fine-grained, well-nigh white sands of a remote island beach, sipping the first caipirinha of the morning while being rubbed down by a scandalously young local beauty, Greybeard has to keep on toiling like a slave, placing his brittle, holed weirs in promising places and casting his seaweed-matted nets in the moist and misty Swedish autumn.

On the flip side, he doesn't have to put up with any serious competition. These fishing grounds around Sweden's second largest East coast harbour town of Karlskrona, exhausted as they may be, are part of a restricted military area and, hence, off limits to friend and foe alike. The fact that Greybeard may move about and do what he does in these waters is due to his excellent relations with the Naval High Command, a military authority that the fisherman's brother used be employed by until he died in a car accident not that long ago. Unconnected outsiders have next to a snowball's chance in hell of getting access here. Besides which, these skerry waters are generally speaking diffcult and treacherous enough to claim the better part of a fisherman's working life to find his way around with as much ease and self-confidence as Greybeard does. Next to a host of natural snares in the form of rocks and reefs lurking just under the surface, there are lots more man-made underwater impediments once installed to block the passage of foreign usurpatory fleets. Once the invasion hysteria subsided, such devices as slanting iron stakes planted in the bottom to hole ships' hulls, big boulders or heaped-up rubbish meant to make such vessels run aground, if they were not immediately removed, risked being forgotten only to report back every now and then, more recently by snaring unsuspecting yachts or fishing vessels. Some aggrieved parties would even claim that certain particularly vicious traps of that kind had, as it were, by tradition, deliberately been "omitted" in common charts.

What exactly it is that makes this part of the Karlskrona skerries a restricted military area, the Sturkö Greybeard has never quite understood, as yet. After all, no local topographical feature hits the eye that even an uninformed observer would immediately acknowledge as having strategic potential. True, there have been rumours and insinuations that the cove at the end of the meandering fairway called Gåsefjærd, or Goose Row by the locals, might, in times of armed conflicts threatening or raging, be employed as a secret, Scapa Flow-like anchorage by Swedish men-of-war.

One way or another, the fisherman couldn't care less. He doesn't need any charts and has never as yet seen a man-of-war venturing into his realm either.

So, Greybeard goes to the aft part of his boat and pulls his outboard to life by the rip cord. Its stink, smoke, stutter and cough become the object of a swan couple's irritated looks. Understandably so, since they had just decided to make a relaxed morning of it by dozing it off blithely with their heads snugly stuck under their wings. Almost as clumsily as pelicans, they now start their elaborate take-off routine, hurrying across the "runway" with their wings flapping and feet slapping. It takes them a good ten to twenty yards to finally take off. Once safely airborne, though, they do make up for their initial clumsiness. Spreading their wings swooshing through the air like swingeing scythes, they buzz off, shouting abuse at the inconsiderate human underneath. Fortunately for both, birds and human, the fog has lifted altogether and yielded its place to alternating drizzle, low, grey cloud and brief spells of consumptive leaden sunshine.

Smartly steered by its skilled skipper, the boat winds its way through the maze of rocks and cliffs, which, once freed of the unimaginable pressure of the last ice-age's glaciers, have inexorably been rising from the sea-bed inch by inch for the past million or so years. Here and there, dark green moss softens the hostile surface of a rock. Low bushes and the odd tree form a shy and cautious vanguard of the terrestrial flora attempting to re-possess the marine cliffs by stealth.

Sea and climate are not the only enemies the local vegetation has to do battle with. Just now, the boat passes by a skerry whose vegetation has been literally eaten away by caustic cormorant crap, which has reduced it to its bare skeleton. Now, a single scorched trunk is all that remains standing, its crippled crown protruding from the greyish green mess like the ruins of some quaint ornithological castle. A single representative of this immensely prolific, yet for some unfathomable reason nevertheless protected, species, once imported from Asia, apparently to help strip European waters of fish and reduce indigenous vegetation, may not have been duly informed of the colony's general relocation action and, dazed and dumbfounded, remains sitting on one of the dead twigs, skulking. When it suddenly takes off, Greybeard follows it with his arm stretched out like a mock rifle. Bang! As he turns with the bird and then pulls the imaginary trigger, the cormorant, knowing full well it has nothing to fear from humans, alights on an object which looks at least as alien to these parts as the bird itself.

Nonplussed if not shocked, the fisherman drops his guard for a moment so that his steerless boat veers off at a tangent and is immediately going for the nearest rocks. Hastily, Greybeard gets up and cuts back the engine to dead slow ahead, with just enough momentum in the boat to both keep the outboard running and his craft on course. Then, he pulls the handle of the outboard, which simultaneously serves as rudder, towards his stomach, thus making his boat describe a rather tight left-about that takes him back to the ruins of Castle Cormorant.

But no, he hasn't fallen victim to one of those weird mirages which certain weather configurations are wont to produce in these latitudes, such as ships standing on their heads or lighthouses popping up in the wrong places. No, the object in question is no hallucination but something very real, albeit unheard-of, still lying where Greybeard saw it first.

Helpless yet, at the same time, threatening in its massive presence, it resembles a stranded killer whale which, in its frenzy to catch a baby seal basking in the sun right in front of its eyes, lets the surf take it a little too far up the beach. Impervious to the deadly danger, the "orca", by now well-nigh exhausted by his repeated physical efforts, his futile wriggling, rocking, and turning in the sands, seems to have resigned itself to acknowledging the fact that it cannot get back into deeper water without somebody's help.

A mishap or blunder you can easily forgive an animal, inexperienced as it may be. Yet this is no orca but a rogue submarine, by the look of it, stranded on one of the notorious Gåsefjærd rocks. Discarding for a moment the obvious trespassing by venturing into a restricted military area, the shallow nature of these waters alone makes the passage of this large vessel a gross abnormity. Without specialised large-scale charts or a local pilot, probably none of which are to be found on board that submarine, not even a Swedish captain in his right mind would venture into these waters. That's culpable negligence not on one, but on two counts.

The sub's bows point towards the open sea and it sits unnaturally high above the surface. With any luck and enough speed, it might just have skidded across the smooth rocks if it weren't for the rudder and propellers at the end of a long, slick hull of olive black. Its aft section is at present bathing in a slowly spreading oil slick glistening in all the colours of the rainbow. That's bad news both for the environment and the sub, since it heralds serious damage likely to turn the boat into a lame duck even if it were to free itself somehow miraculously from the rocks. By the look of it, the submarine, coming from the direction of "Scapa Flow", was unfortunate enough to hit the rocks only yards shy of deeper water and the open sea.

Greybeard takes off his cap and scratches his head. The fact that the boat, with its displacement of some thousand tons and a likely corresponding twelve-foot draft managed to get in here unharmed, at the dead of night, too, presumably, is something of a miracle. But since there are no free lunches, it turns out to be the sub's undoing, by the same token. If it had hit the rocks with its bows on its way in, chances are it could have freed itself by changing into reverse and going full astern. As it is, the sub reached the end of its tether somewhere further down the alley, maybe at "Scapa Flow", and had to turn. Considering its length of two hundred and fifty feet, easily, that must have been something of a feat. But, surprisingly enough, even that intricate manoeuvre must have succeeded.

Yet, luck being known for her fickleness, though, the sub's crew, tired of fooling around and with the exit from this maze right in front of their eyes already, may have felt they were out of the woods and dropped their guard prematurely. And so, the boat finally bumped into a Torumskär rock, when, alas, a few feet to starboard would have done the trick. Whereas the front part of the hull scraped and slid clear, the more delicate aft section, reaching deeper in the water, got caught inextricably.

Had it happened at low water level in some tidal waters, the sub's crew could have set its hope on the tide coming in, sooner or later. But since the Atlantic tide loses its force much further West and South already, whatever reaches Karlskrona is nothing but a sorry excuse for a high tide and certainly too weak to make any noticeable difference.

The sub's hitting the rocks is what must have caused last night's din. Realizing they now were between a rock and a hard place, the crew must have made every possible effort to bridge that frustrating gap separating them from deeper water. Which accounts for the ghostly howling of those maltreated diesel engines. But with one or two torn propellers and maybe a twisted or broken shaft into the bargain, this rogue's progress would have been at an end there and then, at all events, rock or no rock.

The fisherman stops the stuttering outboard spitting cooling water in tiny jets, and ducks instinctively, as if afraid of coming under fire. Then, he manoeuvres his boat to leeward of Castle Cormorant, whose scorched, corroded branches and twigs seem to point so many accusing bony fingers at the strange intruder.

The sub's flag pointlessly flapping from its fin is another unknown quantity for the fisherman. White, with a narrow blue stripe in the bottom part and a red star and hammer-and-scythe emblem, it can't possibly be Swedish, so much is for sure. An Eastern resident on what the Socialists like to call the Sea of Friendship? A Russian, maybe? Very probably, even. Who else would fly the nostalgic symbols of a long-forgotten industrial revolution in a time and age inexorably hurrying towards the brave new world of digitalisation, artificial intelligence and fast-track web. Quixotic socialists, obviously.

For historical and other reasons, Russians are a less than popular feature in Sweden, generally, and on the Swedish East coast skerries, in particular. At the start of the eighteenth century, characterized, as it was, by ever-changing alliances among the Scandinavian nations, an enterprising tsar, Peter the Great, tired of seeing his invasion efforts thwarted by the hostile skerries, at one stage decided to decimate their civilian population, for starters. So, he sent a substantial fleet with some sixty thousand soldiers of fortune aboard, who were let loose on the coastal belt of skerries between Arholma in the North and Landsort in the South like packs of wolves on a herd of innocent sheep. They had the go-ahead to rob, kill, maim, rape, pillage – in short, to sack the lot. And that's by and large what they did.

Water under the bridge, you might argue, yet something that keeps the Russian image tainted for centuries to come, lurking at the back of people's minds as much as the unseen rocks in the fairways of many of today's skerry folks.

Russian-Swedish relations, burdened as they were with such unpleasant reminiscences, were further fouled by recent sightings, alleged or real, of rogue submarines trespassing in neutral Sweden's coastal waters. Whatever nationality they were, and folks' money would be on the Russians, of course, the Swedish armed forces, despite deploying a large number of men and costly state-of-the-art radar and sonar equipment, never got hold of any.

Which soon made the Swedes the laughing stock of Europe and NATO. Especially so, when it transpired that seals and mink, when swimming, tend to produce breathing or gasping sounds that strongly resemble those of a snorkelling submarine. The mink population, another alien species, this time imported from the US during the sixties, had later been let loose on the indigenous fauna since fur coats and wraps had suddenly fallen out of grace.

Well, if this sub really proved to be Russian, that kind of skulduggery would surely end now, once and for all.

As much as the fisherman cursed the noise that had cost him the better part of a night's sleep, the ghastly silence at present enshrouding the sub spooks him even more. Nobody on the bridge or deck. No sound from inside penetrating the hermetically closed hull. Whatever happened to the forty or fifty crew likely to be necessary to keep a submarine like that going and ready for combat at any time? Have they been suffocated by the CO2-level suddenly and unexplicably rising? Or have they fallen victim to some kind of nuclear accident? The engines sounded like diesel alright, but what about its arsenal of warheads and stuff? Unlikely. Then what? Normally, you would expect any number of men clambering all over the thing to assess and, wherever possible, repair the damage sustained. Nothing of the sort.

Should he simply and blithely row across and give it a gentle knock as in anybody home? In his youth, Greybeard used to be an ardent admirer of H.G. Wells and, in particular, the author's War of the Worlds. Literally breathless, he had clung to the old wireless set when Orson Welles had broadcast his legendary radio play version of the book across the US. He still remembers how he used to curse that fidgety old wireless whenever it got a wave of static or went off the air altogether for brief but painful moments, usually at the most critical parts of the play, obviously.

One of the book's lesser characters, a certain Ogleby, was it, had ventured close to the red-hot space capsule that had landed in his back garden with a thump. He had offered to help the Martians, not used to the Earth's strong gravity, out of their metal cocoon. The aliens hadn't thanked him for it, though, but had reduced him to cinders with their heat-ray gun. Nobody deserves an end like that.

Or maybe the Russians were able to activate some kind of electric shield around the sub's hull to discourage giant squid and inquisitive natives alike, as last seen in Captain Nemo's Nautilus?

On a less dramatic note: now that all their own efforts to wriggle free had proved futile, the Russians were probably just sitting or lying inside, drinking vodka and smoking those awful papirosi lung torpedos while impatiently waiting for their Leningrad salvage vessels to arrive and help them out of their embarrassing predicament.

A big grey cloud slowly wraps this part of the skerries in a dark veil that renders the scenery around the olive-black submarine even more surreal than it was before, anyway. The fisherman is in two minds. Strictly speaking, he ought to notify the Karlskrona naval authorities without further undue delay, Then again, is he to blame for the fact that his modest abode on Sturkö still lacks a phone connection? Hardly. He has been waiting for it for years now, filing applications to the tune of five or six a year, but getting staved off time and time again under no end of pretexts like so much snot on somebody's shirt sleeve.

What goes round comes round. In order to sound the alert now, he has to go back all the way to the hamlet of Utorp on Sturkö. Here, he can make a call from the crummy village shop. But what if, against all odds, the sub manages to get off meanwhile and evaporates into thin air before the cavalry arrives? Would Greybeard not look like another skerry codger taking his place in a long queue of dotty sub spotters? Chances were. A kingdom for a camera. Or for a second sober guy, ready and willing to bear credible witness to the sub's existence.

Suddenly, the cormorant is startled by a sound that causes it to croak and scram. A delicate screeching sound like that of a Martian space shuttle's lid being gently unscrewed. On the sub's fin, two uniformed figures appear. Crew members, obviously. Not officers, of that the fisherman is pretty certain. More like lower-rank sailors or maybe NCO's at best.

The two Russians look around as if they had never before set eyes on the surface of the blue planet and wish to test the breath-ability of its foul atmosphere. Maybe, after weeks inside the sub, this is in fact their first glimpse of the coastal scenery, so that they have to familiarise themselves with the quaint topography before heading for the nearest pub.

The fisherman, who has docked his boat in a cove at the south-eastern corner of Torumskär, cracks a grim sort of smile. Pub? Did I hear you mention pubs there just now? Martian, when you get to Sweden, abandon all hope of base earthly gratifications such as drinking, dancing, smoking, or worse. This is a country inhabited by solid, sober community stalwarts who will not indulge in vain, socially unredeeming funny business. If that's what you have come for, you should rather have touched down in Denmark, Scandinavia's centre of loose morals and ethical depredation.

From where Greybeard is crouching in his boat, he can watch them, but they can't see him, of that he is sure. Torumskär's inviting shore is but ten yards away from the sub. One of the two bends down like an on-off character in a Punch-and-Judy show. Again, there is that eerie screech accompanying the screwing of the "lid". Apparently, the sailor is closing the outside hatch.

What seems strange to the fisherman is the fact that those two should be the only ones eager enough to get off and shake a leg.

For a second, they are both standing tall and undecided. Then they seem to nod at each other as if confirming the next step of a plan: let's go do it. They hurriedly though clumsily climb down the fin like some creatures not totally acquainted with their own limbs and manifestly lacking physical exercise. Arriving on deck, both make a run for it all of a sudden and hop onto the washed-up rocks closest to the boat. Now, finally, it is dawning upon Greyveard. Those two are no sailors enjoying the start of their shore leave; those are deserters trying to jump ship and ask for asylum in Sweden.

And they might make it, too. Right now, they hobble from one boulder to another like participants in some orienteering event, trying to cross a torrential Cimarron with the help of stepping stones which some kind souls left for anyone choosing the same route.

Yet the sea is no stream and these rocks, though bigger than your average stepping stone, offer no firm foothold, overgrown by moss, algae, and lichen as they are. One of the two, probably the one who closed the cover, slips on impact and falls backwards into a trench of deeper water. Getting up again like a wet poodle, he shakes off the water, doggy style, while being helped onto the rocks by his mate. Thus, they both set foot onto the skerry proper.

With terra firma under their soles, they start running, keep stumbling, get up again cursing and carry on in fits and starts.

When the fisherman realizes they are bound his way, he gets a shock. Have they seen him, after all, and expect him to help them escaping? That might land him in deep trouble, not least because, to an uninformed observer, his presence on the scene must look like part of an elaborate escape scheme. One way or another, they are in fact heading straight towards him and are now only ten, eleven yards away from the cove.

Once again, the "poodle", whose dripping wet cotton-wool uniform visibly weighs him down like a lead jacket, jumps over a sizeable piece of rock blocking his path. In the split second he becomes airborne, however, he is immediately knocked down as if stopped by some invisible giant fist. He crashes onto the stone with his torso first. Such is the force and speed of the movement that he has no time to protect himself with outstretched arms forward, as most of us would do instinctively in a vicious fall like that.

Only now does the echo of a shot like the dry crack of a whip reach the fisherman's consciousness. And yet, transfixed, he refuses to take his eyes off the sailor lying there only yards away with his arms next to his head as if surrendering. That he is fatally wounded is clearly being signalled by the blood gushing forth from underneath his chest. His mate has stopped dead in his tracks. Now, he dashes back the few yards he had gained on his friend and bends down, checks on him and, finding him beyond repair, apparently tries to pick up something the fisherman can't discern.

Before the "dry" sailor can snatch it, the silvery shining object slides down the wet rock overgrown by moss and plops into the water, sinking immediately. The sailor curses his luck and, getting up again, turns, and dashes off in a zigzagging motion. More shots are being fired from the submarine, more slugs are tearing through the moist and chilly satin air, none hitting its receding target. Soon, the running sailor is out of sight of both his former comrades on the sub and the fisherman in his boat drawing a sigh of relief for not having got involved.

The dying Russian briefly lifts his head a few inches and squints at Greybeard. Thus, an elderly Swedish fisherman huddled in his typical clothing, huddled in an open wooden boat, is the last fading impression the Russian will take with him on his return voyage to that other world he seemed to have come from.

Snapping out of his trance as if following a sudden call of duty, Greybeard seizes one of his oars which he always keeps handy in case the moody outboard flies into one or another of its fits. He doesn't have to poke and rake in the shallow water for long before the glistening object thought lost presents itself on the blade of the oar. It may have been caught by some kelp or been resting on a narrow ledge of the rocky underwater architecture; no matter, there it is.

Pulling the thing out of the water, Greybeard is not slow in realizing that what he brought up there is a rather commonplace hip flask, the kind of mickey which hunters and fishermen like to carry on their person to take a swig of the good stuff while waiting for their prey to show or fish to bite. He weighs the flask in the palm of his hand and finds it too pale to be of sterling silver and too light to be of its Russian equivalent. Probably just tin, with the crude emblem of a double-headed eagle soldered on by an amateur smithy. He gives the flask a good shaking, expecting to hear the gurgling sound of some intoxicating liquid. Instead, it sounds rather like the soft rustling of some piece of paper.

As he unscrews the top, the end of what must be a roll of stiff black foil or maybe a photographic film pops out as if offering its services. With the tips of two fingers, he pulls it out ever so carefully. A roll of film alright, that's what it is. Or, more precisely, the developed negative version of a microfilm the sailor was carrying in the flask, no doubt to protect it from getting wet en route. Why he should bother to burden himself with this, Greybeard cannot even begin to guess.

Unwilling or unable to curb his curiosity, the fisherman seizes one corner of the end of the film, unrolls it just a few inches and holds it up against the leaden sun. No portraits or summer holiday reminiscences, as far as he can make out, but photographed letters or files, something like that. Somewhat disappointed, he forces the film back into the flask and screws the top back on. Then he slides the flask into his breast pocket.

Giving the dead sailor a last sidelong glance as if fearing he might only have feigned his death, after all, and would now ask for his flask back, Greybeard pushes his boat off the shore with the oar. Back on the sub, the snipers have been joined by more members of the boat's crew. Everybody seems to be in a spot of frenzy, shouting, gesticulating, and no doubt preparing to leave the sub, walk across and carry the corpse aboard before any Swede roaming the area might come across it.

All things considered, it must have been a pretty desperate move for the two Russians to try and jump ship and defect to the West. How could they even hope to remain unnoticed long enough for them to scamper to freedom? Their "comrades" gave one of them short shrift and would probably not hesitate for a moment to dispatch the fisherman in like manner as an unwanted witness.

Greybeard feels he should not give them that satisfaction and, bending down, rips his outboard into life again. Its noisy purr is likely to give him away to the Russians, but, using the edge of the low-lying skerry's shore band as precarious cover, he heads back to Sturkö.

2. The Stalker

"What's that? How? Who? Would you care to repeat that for me, please?"

Chief of Staff Gustav Carlsson, commander-in-chief of the Swedish Navy, coughs up the last crumbs of his breakfast Danish still stuck in his throat. Only minutes ago, as he was looking over a pile of balance sheets and draft proposals to be discussed during an important service meeting this very afternoon, the world still seemed in order, by and large. Then, the phone rang.

"Just leave it alone, dear," he said to his wife rushing to answer it.

"They should have learned by now that I will not answer the phone before having finished my breakfast. Nothing this side of World War Three can be of sufficient importance to ruin my digestion."

It was only when it wouldn't stop that he finally picked it up with apprehension and disgust.

He still can't believe what the person at the other end of the line, apparently a senior lieutenant of the watch whose name Carlsson has never heard before, has just reported in an agitated voice. A Soviet submarine in the skerries? Again? No, not just sighted this time. Run aground at Torumskär and sitting high and dry for the time being.

"Torumskär? Is that what you said?"

The CiC turns round and takes a look at a chart of the Karlskrona area hanging above his head in a glass frame. It's an ancient chart he once managed to pry from his father's hands. But unless Torumskär has moved considerably during the past century and a half, it should still form part of the restricted military area designated by one of his predecessors in office shortly after the war.

"Spotted by who? A naked, acid-guzzling tree-hugging crank? A fisherman? What fisherman? What's a bloody fisherman doing in the restricted area anyway? How did he come by that authorisation? I'll be damned. Why not open the place to the wider public right away, have fun fairs and midsummer witch hunts there if well-nigh everyone seems to be ambling about there, anyway, God damn it."

"Where exactly? I see. And what do you expect me to do about it? Wouldn't it be better to call in someone with a smattering of Russian? What's that? The matter seems of rather urgent nature? No shit. Time always presses, it's in its very DNA, dimwit. Without even an interpreter, the Russians and I will obviously be talking at cross-purposes. What's that? Who the hell am I talking to now? Ehm, yes, I see, Minister, of course, right away. With the utmost discretion, goes without saying. Mum's the word. But, as I was just saying, communication seems to be a problem. I beg your pardon? German? Are you sure? Yes, my German is... reasonable, I'd say. Detailed report for your eyes only, of course. Meanwhile, what am I going to tell the Russians? Pardon? Play it by ear? Of course, will do. Consider it done...Later, Minister."

Gustav Carlsson has hardly slammed the receiver back into the cradle, when he hears the tyres of his service Volvo come to a noisy halt on the neatly fine-combed gravel of his driveway. It's going to take him to the harbour, where a fast patrol boat will be waiting for him. Deeply plunged into a host of conflicting thoughts, he allows his wife to help him into his uniform coat and right his seasonal dark blue cap from cocky to straight. Then, he kisses his wife, claps his sedate Labrador retriever, and walks to the car in what he considers a dignified gait.

"Morning Lassy," he jovially greets the driver, who slams the front-seat passenger's door shut behind him. The driver's name is really Lasse but Carlsson, a confirmed dog lover, has grown used to pronouncing it in a manner reminiscent of the TV-collie of his youth, and the driver doesn't care.

"The harbour then, is it?" Lasse makes sure once again.

"No, Lassy, to the airport," Carlsson ironically answers Lasse's rhetorical question.

"I feel like defecting to the East, this morning. But don't you go tell anyone."

The driver laughs and pulls out of the Carlssons' estate, stirring up the gravel anew.

During his ride to town, Carlsson tries hard to recapitulate the most salient points of the Navy's Guidelines for Encounters of the Third Kind, as his colleagues jokingly call the Defence Ministry's Standing Recommendations outlining the approach expected from officers and enlisted men in the case, unlikely but not totally out of the question as it were, of sudden encounters with foreign, and, in particular, East European submarines. A useful set of guidelines, albeit not containing any specific etiquette with a view to direct eye-to-eye contact and communication with the crews of such vessels. For that, it would seem the socio-cultural peculiarities of potential "candidates" are a little too heterogeneous if not manifold. What the heck, he'll have to make it up then as he goes.

That's easier said than done, though, at a time of tension fraught with mutual distrust. The international climate seems irremediably poisoned as the Cold War is threatening to go hot a little more day by day. In a situation like this, any slip of the tongue could turn into the spark that blows up the powder barrel. That would be bad enough as it is. Worse even, the whole Torumskär affair might turn out to be another hoax and Carlsson, end up on the pillory.

But even if there is something to it, discretion will be of the essence, or, cucumber is the word. Having picked up that quaint saying from a British colleague on the margins of a NATO conference years ago, he likes to try it on for size whenever he gets a chance to. Not altogether certain of its meaning, since, after all, What's a bloody cucumber got to do with anything, he has however noted it to have the scattering effect of a barrel bomb. Since nobody really seems to know what it means, everybody applies it to their respective contexts as they think fit. Like calling out stop thief! at a bazaar just to watch half the shopping crowd make a run for it.

He will have to demonstrate equilibrium and diplomatic skill to get full marks on this one; that much is for sure. After all, he hasn't spent thirty-odd years eating shit to climb the career ladder, only to see the snakes catching up with him on the occasion of some dumb episode such as a Soviet sub getting stuck where it shouldn't be in the first place. If he screws it up, he could be benched, side-lined or even released into early retirement, perish the thought. Quite enough to have been demoted from bustling Stockholm to drowsy Karlskrona, thank you very much. No need to condemn him, in the twilight of his life, to a woman whom he no longer has much to say to plus a dog that, even though infinitely more exciting, cannot contribute much to the conversation.

"Lassy, could you do me a favour and turn that radio down," he asks the driver, who seems to be infatuated with that German earworm about a prostitute causing a riot in the Sperrbezirk, or restricted area, which in the case of that song, however, is not of military but erotic nature. It's the kind of musical reminder Carlsson needs now like he does a bullet to the head, what with both the national and international landscapes being what they are.

In Washington, the new sheriff and acclaimed hero of countless Hollywood horse operas, Ronald Reagan, has hardly tried out his armchair in the Oval Office, but has already declared all armament and defence cuts in the national US budget ordained by several of his predecessors null and void. And for good measure, he ordered a massive all-out manoeuvre involving Army, Navy, and Air Force to be held round the North Cape, with the Soviet submarine harbour Murmansk only just around the corner. Whenever someone sticks a mike in his face, Reagan, recently recovered from the first attempt on his life, keeps blithering on about his Strategic Defence Initiative meant to install a battery of space flak to intercept Soviet and other nuclear missiles on their way to US territory. The project bears all the features of another Star Wars against the Empire of Evil, as he calls the Soviet Union.

Meanwhile, Moscow is governed by Ukrainian-born Leonid Brezhnev. Probably not for very much longer, considering his poor health. But then again, his likely successor, Yuri Andropov, doesn't really look much healthier either. The painfully protracted ailment of its political leaders seems like a telling comment on the general state of affairs of this giant sub-continent of a country. Even though economically speaking clearly coming apart at the seams, Soviet Russia is desperately trying to hold its own in an arms race which all unbiased observers think of as a foregone conclusion. If proof of that was needed, it could be found, not least, in the Russians' eagerness to launch ever more and ever bigger nuclear-powered subs armed with medium to long-range missiles with a nuclear-warhead option.

As for the Europeans, NATO's double-track decision and the American intention to hand out their Pershing 2 to all and sundry splits the Old Continent's nations right down the middle and gives rise to protest demonstrations all round, while the Soviets calmly place their SS–20 cruise missiles at all "neuralgic" spots along its western borders in very much the same fashion as Anatoli Karpow puts his pawns in position.

And now this rogue submarine stirring up the dust even more. Could it possibly have nuclear warhead missiles in its arsenal? That would be so much grist to the mill for NATO, which has been urging the Swedes to relinquish their mock neutrality in favour of membership of the Western alliance.

On the national stage, things don't look much brighter. This year of all years, the Swedish Social Democrats who have ruled the country ever since Noah took to building his ark, have unexpectedly lost a parliamentary election. Heading a shaky minority government, Prime Minister Thorbjörn Fälldin has to get all of his planned initiatives authorised by Parliament first and, on national security issues, finds himself hounded by the young Conservative runaway populist Carl Bildt.

One way or another, the spotlights of the world will be turned on Sweden and at tiny little Torumskär. Not a lot of room for error there.

"All's well, Madame la Marquise," Carlsson is heard muttering with a grim smile on his lips.

He should have listened to his wife, after all, when she had suggested on several occasions they ought to take a break and spend two weeks in the Canary Islands – Tenerife, Gran Canaria, any of those would do to catch a bit of fun in the sun. Too late to fret about it now. Reporting sick this morning was another bygone option. Should he have taken his service revolver with him? Whatever for? To shoot himself a few Russians or end his own life on a bloody skerry? To show off, maybe. But were the Russians that impressionable? He doubted it.

Why the ministry would take it that the Russians were perfectly capable of conversing in German, of all languages, escapes him. Surely, all Comecon members spoke a Russian of sorts. Carlsson himself could say nothing in that language but the most basic phrases such as "hello", "thank you", "good bye" and "cheers", of course. Not much material to base a conversation on. The hell of a tickly mission, that. Which is probably why they were sending him. Probably, he even owes this doubtful honour to a recommendation by the Head of Supreme Command towards whom Carlsson entertains a simmering animosity.

The Volvo station wagon brakes and comes to a halt. They have reached the Naval part of the harbour. Carlsson gets out, before the driver can rip the door open for him. As he approaches the quay, another grin lights up Carlsson's face. Are they really doing it on purpose?

Tied to the quay, a fast patrol boat, its hull painted in camouflage grey to become almost invisible against a background of granite skerry, is gently bobbing up and down on the harbour swell with its engine running and its exhaust fuming. Its name is Smygaren, no less, meaning the Stalker, or Sneaker. A less than subtle hint on the part of the Head of Command, that hypocritical twit? Hopefully, the Russians in the sub don't know enough Swedish to fully apprehend the implied joke which is clearly on Carlsson. Even with the ludicrous meaning set aside, however, the name is reminiscent of a Hobbit character in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and thus hardly apt to convey the idea of supreme authority to the Russians.

With the Smygaren's boatswain piping the side, Carlsson steps on the gangway, salutes the flag aft, and jumps aboard. After a perfunctorily barked "Good morning, men!" he dismisses the small crew, who immediately go about their business, and goes inside the boat with its captain, a young lieutenant, on his heels. Smygaren slips her moorings, pushes off and rapidly increases speed to full ahead, her stern digging in and her bows rearing like a bronco's chest. Looking around inside, Carlsson spots a grey-bearded civilian sitting in the corner holding himself with both arms stretched out in an effort not to be thrown off by that boat with the funny name.

"Who the hell is he?" Carlsson turns on the lieutenant. To make himself heard, he has to shout now, lest the roar of the Smygaren's engines and the rushing and gushing of her wake drown his words. His most recent voyage aboard a ballbreaker like this one probably dated back to the nineteen-fifties.

"That's Birger Bengtsson, the fisherman, cap," the lieutenant shouts back.

"What fisherman? Oh, that fisherman, I get it."

"He has excellent local knowledge and can lead us to the sub."

"Excellent," Carlsson replies, as he shakes hands with the man.

"Even though I suspect we might have been able to find it even without your help. After all, a Russian sub doesn't just blend into the skerry landscape like a jolly joker in the crowd, does it? Still, welcome aboard, and thanks for the call."

He sits down on the bunk and gives Bengtsson his full attention.

"How close do you reckon we can get to the Russians?"

Svensson shrugs his shoulders.

"Close enough to pull up to them, if need be, I expect. The sub is sitting on the very edge of the rock, half of the hull on it, the other half off it. Hence, coming from her starboard side, you always remain in deeper water, the sub acting almost like a pier."

"I see. The fastest way there?"

Bengtsson points at the quivering metal table, on whose top the lieutenant has spread a chart. The two men get up and join the lieutenant on shaky legs like drunkards eager to find out what more options the joint has to offer in the way of drinks.

"There's that narrow passage here, leading straight to the place. Ought to fit your draft."

"Ought to? Ought to? And what if it doesn't?"

Carlsson looks at the lieutenant questioningly.

"Double-check that, please. I mean, we now have the Russians by the short and curlies. What we don't want is to loosen our grip and forfeit our psychological advantage by running aground ourselves during our approach right in front of them. Won't do, won't do at all."

"Those are tricky waters," the lieutenant agrees.

"But Mr. Bengtsson here claims to be on speaking terms with its every nook and cranny."

"Well, we'll see, shan't we? Will the Russians be able to see us coming?"

"If they're sober, yes, I'd say so."

Carlsson chooses to ignore that bit of heavy irony as by and largely racist.

"What I do not want under any circumstances is to surprise them. That could cause them to jump the gun, as it were, triggering a chain reaction."

"Like emptying the magazines of their Kalashnikows at us?" the lieutenant asks.

"For example. But no, I am thinking more in terms of blowing up their own boat. How am I to know what their permanent service directions prescribe for such contingencies?"

"Never corner a rat lest it might attack you," Bengtsson feels authorised to contribute a piece of personal experience.

"Precisely, even though I would rather not have it put quite in those disobliging terms. No, I see ourselves as a bunch of white settlers coming to the redskins' camp unarmed to have a jolly powwow and smoke the calumet. Talking of which, anyone for a spot of snush?"

He takes out his snuff box, opens it and offers it to Bengtsson, who accepts, and the lieutenant, who declines.

"I like that," Carlsson adds, helping himself to the snuff. "Redskins, get it?"

He laughs about his little quip.

"To make one thing perfectly clear. I want you to keep our powder dry and your bow canon covered with the tarpaulin at all times, you hear, at all times. Nobody aboard the Smygaren is to pull a weapon on the Russians or even look vaguely threatening. Cucumber's the word. I hold you responsible for your men, hear? I may be wrong, but I should guess the Russians will be waving their AK 47's at us and God knows I want no bloodshed."

The lieutenant salutes and exits to pass Carlsson's orders on to his crew. The Chief-of-Staff turns to Bengtsson again.

"Tell me, what kind of impression did the Russians make on you. I mean, the whole set-up, running aground aside, is it a spick and span operation or rather a sloppy show?"

Bengtsson apparently finds that a hard one.

"Well, neither, nor, I expect. They didn't invite me in, so...."

"Yes, well, I understand. But how did it happen, What's your opinion?"

"I guess the boat entered at night, turned at some stage, and left, or almost."

"Yes. I expect that just about sums it up."

"Could have happened to anyone, I suppose. Don't know how they manage to navigate in a sub, anyway."

"Well, I could explain, but we don't have that much time, really. Funny we didn't hear the crash all the way to Karlskrona. I mean, I didn't. You?"

"You bet. I live on Sturkö, and unless you are deaf as a post, you must have heard it. A bumping, screeching kind of sound, like hitting your fist against a blackboard and then running your fingernails across it, very unpleasant."

"Her bows are pointing seaward, you say?"

"Yes. Her stern is on the hook. They must have come on at a pretty brisk rate, by the look of it. Hence the damage. She's leaking oil."

"Diesel as well?"

"No, I don't think so, didn't smell any, just engine oil."

Carlsson takes off his cap and scratches his head. What happened to the coast guard and the naval radar control station? They must have had the Russian on their screens at some stage. What did they think they were looking at? A Swedish sub venturing into that area would surely have given prior notice. A conflict of competencies and responsibilities, probably. Like policemen shoving a corpse to and fro at the border between two communities, neither wishing to have anything to do with it. Well, heads would roll, that he would see to with his caustic report, for sure. As long as he could keep his own on his shoulders...

Bengtsson, too, has fallen silent. He hasn't told the officer anything about the two defecting Russian sailors, nor about the microfilm in the flask. He probably ought to report it and hand over the negatives. But his gut feeling tells him to keep sitting on the fence, as it were. Why stir up the shit? Probably all written in Russian, anyway. His daughter Helle comes to mind. She studied Russian in Moscow and Leningrad for two years. After that, she had continued to entertain a kind of long-distance relationship with a Russian student of mechanical engineering. But somehow, it had just petered out after a while, the way things do. She would be able to read the stuff, once it had been put on paper in black and white. Once he knew what it was all about, he could always decide what to do with it, eventually.

Meanwhile, Smygaren has penetrated deep into skerry territory and slackens speed, and like a hunter, still panting with the effort of running, now approaches his prey on tiptoe, stooping amd avoiding all sounds. Carlsson and Bengtsson step on deck to be ready.

"There she is!"

The lieutenant points in the direction. At first, Carlsson sees nothing but green sea and blackish rocks. It's only when the lieutenant hands him his binoculars that he spots the alien submarine peacefully lying there as if resting. Very gently, his one eye on the sub, the other on the electronic depth finder, the lieutenant edges Smygaren, now coming into her own and doing her name more than proud, towards the blackish-brown submarine's hull, which, all according to the angles of light and vision, changes into a dark olive.

Carlsson isn't slow in recognizing that this boat is not a chip off the most recent blocks of Soviet submarine construction, whose representatives can dive under the polar cap and hover there motionless, effortless under tons of massive ice floes, suddenly and unexpectedly to crash through the ice with their fins first and almost simultaneously launch a fan of missiles with nuclear warheads that will reach and annihilate scores of American or European cities.

No, this is a much more pedestrian species, probably launched at a Leningrad shipyard towards the end of the nineteen fifties and still displaying a lot of features derived from the German subs of the so-called twenty-one class. Those were built, but never deployed, in 1944, when the end of Nazi rule drew nigh, inexorably. For someone like Carlsson, a visit aboard the Russian, if it came to that, would be an almost nostalgic event, like squeezing into one of the Russian tanks that freed Stalingrad.

On the sub's fin, Carlsson notices two sailors mounting guard with their AK-47 in front of a bent and broken radio beaming aerial. Before running aground and ruining its underwater hull, the boat must have collided with a surface vessel, thus denting its superstructures. Neither an uncommon mishap in the narrow Baltic.

"Well, you were right," the lieutenant says.

"What next?"

Carlsson turns to Bengtsson.

"You're sure there's sufficient water depth over there, are you?"

The fisherman gives him an assertive nod.

"Up to the cormorant skerry, at any rate. Beyond that, it's getting shallow really fast, though."

"Well, you heard him," Carlsson turns towards the lieutenant.

"The best thing would be for you to drop me right over there," he tells him, pointing at a relatively green piece of skerry to the south of the submarine.

"Afterwards, you withdraw and wait for reinforcements. Won't be long now for the hurly-burly proper to break loose. All available sections of the armed forces have been mobilized – Navy, Army, Airforce, everybody on their toes. Try and establish permanent contact with the Supreme Command so we can get our orders. If and when you see me waving, that means I want to be taken off the skerry. Are we good, so far?"

"All clear, cap."

The lieutenant clicks a few snap hooks to open the railing wide enough for the chief-of-staff to pass through at his ease.

They've reached Torumskär now. Smygaren's bows literally kiss the smooth rock, whose thick layer of moss acts as a fender. Under the distrustful glances of the Russians, resting their AK-47s in the crooks of their arms, Carlsson steps off the fast patrol boat. With shaking legs and under the constant risk of losing his foothold, he slides off the rocks now covered with an unholy mixture of wet moss and engine oil, and drops into the polluted water.

With very small steps, he slowly approaches the sub. He could of course facilitate matters for himself by stepping onto the sub's deck, but that would be a glaring infringement of naval etiquette, a faux pas that would bide ill for the ensuing course of affairs.

"Drushba, tovarishtsh!" he calls out to the sailors, another choice morsel of Russian that he remembered on his way here. Funny, how the brain functions. He is sure he could have tried to recall that greeting at home in vain for hours on end. Only now, in full view of the Russians, it comes back to him from God knows where when he needs it most. Does the brain have a sense of priorities?

One way or another, the Russians reply with a joyless grin. Obviously, there is more work to be done on Carlsson's pronunciation. But they seem to appreciate the gesture.

"Request to come aboard," Carlsson then adds, first in English, then in German.