Konovalenko had also wondered whether the best solution might be to shoot them. But he decided that was unnecessary. He still needed Vladimir’s legwork. Besides, the cops would only get more excited than they already were.
They moved to the other apartment that same night. Konovalenko had given Vladimir and Tania strict instructions to stay at home the next few days.
Among the first things Konovalenko learned as a young KGB officer was that there were deadly sins in the shadowy world of the intelligence service. Being a servant of secrecy meant joining a brotherhood where the most important rules were written in invisible ink. The worst sin of all, of course, was being a double agent. Betraying one’s own organization, but at the same time doing it in the service of an enemy power. In the mystical hell of the intelligence service, the moles were closest to the center of the inferno.
There were other deadly sins. One was to arrive too late.
Not just to a meeting, emptying a secret letter box, a kidnapping, or even nothing more complicated than a journey. Just as bad was being too late with regard to oneself, one’s own plans, one’s own decisions.
Nevertheless, that is what had happened to Konovalenko early in the morning of May 7. The mistake he made was to put too much faith in his BMW. As a young KGB officer, his superiors had always taught him to plan a journey on the basis of two parallel possibilities. If one vehicle proved to be unserviceable, there should always be time to resort to a planned alternative. But that Friday morning, when his BMW suddenly stopped on St. Erik’s Bridge and refused to start again, he had no alternative. Of course, he could take a cab or the subway. Besides, since he did not know if and when the cop or his daughter would leave the apartment in Bromma, it was not even certain he would be too late, anyway. Nevertheless, it seemed to him like the mistake, all the guilt, was his, not the car’s. He spent nearly twenty minutes trying to restart it, and it seemed like he was trying to bring about a resurrection. But the engine was dead as far as he was concerned.
In the end he gave up, and flagged down a cab. He had planned to be outside the red-brick apartment block by seven at the latest. As it was, he did not get there until nearly a quarter to eight.
It had not been difficult to find out that Wallander had a daughter and that she was the one living in Bromma. He called the police station in Ystad and was told that Wallander was staying at the Central Hotel in Stockholm. He claimed to be a cop himself. Then he went to the hotel and pretended to be discussing a block booking for a sizable group of tourists a couple of months later. When he was not being observed, he stole a look at a message left for Wallander and quickly memorized the name Linda and a telephone number. He left the hotel, and then traced the number to an address in Bromma. He chatted to a woman on the stairs there, and soon figured out how things stood.
That morning he waited on the street outside the apartment until half past eight. Just then, an elderly woman emerged from the building. He went over to her and wished her good morning; she recognized the pleasant guy who had spoken to her previously.
“They left early this morning,” she said in reply to his question.
“Both of them?”
“Both of them.”
“Are they going to be away long?”
“She promised to call.”
“She told you where they were going, no doubt?”
“They were going abroad on vacation. I didn’t quite catch where.”
Konovalenko could see she was trying hard to remember. He waited.
“France, I think it was,” she said eventually. “I’m not absolutely sure, mind you.”
Konovalenko thanked her for her assistance, and left. He would send Rykoff later to go over the apartment.
As he needed time to think and was in no special hurry, he walked to Brommaplan where he could no doubt find a cab. The BMW had served its purpose, and he would give Rykoff the job of finding him another car before the day was out.
Konovalenko immediately rejected the possibility that they had gone abroad. The cop from Ystad was a cold, calculating sort of guy. He had discovered that somebody had been asking the old lady questions the day before. Somebody who would doubtless come back and ask some more questions. And so he left a false trail, pointing to France.
Where can they have gone, Konovalenko wondered. In all probability he has taken his daughter back with him to Ystad. But he might have chosen some other place I couldn’t possibly track down.
A temporary retreat, thought Konovalenko. I’ll give him a start that I can recover later.
He drew one more conclusion. The cop from Ystad was worried. Why else would he take his daughter with him?
Konovalenko gave a little smile at the thought that they were thinking along the same lines, he and the insignificant little cop called Wallander. He recalled something a KGB colonel said to his new recruits shortly after they started their long period of training. A high level of education, a long line of ancestors, or even a high level of intelligence is no guarantee of becoming an outstanding chess player.
The main thing just now was to find Victor Mabasha, he thought. Kill him. Finish off what he had failed to do in the disco and the cemetery.
With a vague feeling of unease, he recalled the previous evening.
Shortly before midnight he called South Africa and spoke with Jan Kleyn on his special emergency number. He had rehearsed what he was going to say very carefully. There were no more excuses to explain away Victor Mabasha’s continued existence. And so he lied. He said Victor Mabasha had been killed the previous day. A hand grenade in the gas tank. When the rubber band holding back the firing pin had been eaten away, the car exploded. Victor Mabasha had perished instantaneously.
All the same, Konovalenko sensed a degree of dissatisfaction in Jan Kleyn. A crisis of confidence between himself and the South African intelligence service that he could not afford. That could put his whole future at risk.
Konovalenko resolved to step on the gas. There was no longer any time to spare. Victor Mabasha had to be tracked down and killed within the next few days.
This unfathomable dusk slowly set in. But Victor Mabasha barely noticed it.
Now and again he thought about the man he was to kill. Jan Kleyn would understand. He would allow him to retain his assignment. One of these days, he would have the South African president in his sights. He would not hesitate, he would carry out the assignment he had taken on.
He wondered if the president was aware that he would soon be dead. Did white people have their own songomas who came to them in their dreams?
In the end he concluded they must have. How could any man survive without being in contact with the spirit world that controlled our lives, that had power over life and death?
On this occasion the spirits had been kind to him. They had told him what he had to do.
Wallander woke up soon after six in the morning. For the first time since starting to track down Louise Akerblom’s killer, he was starting to feel properly rested. He could hear his daughter snoring through the half-open door. He got up and stood in the doorway, watching her. He was suddenly overwhelmed by intense joy, and it occurred to him that the meaning of life was quite simply to take care of one’s children. Nothing else. He went to the bathroom, took a long shower, and decided to make an appointment with the police doctor. It must be possible to give some kind of medical help to a cop with the serious intention of losing weight and getting fitter.