He was abruptly brought back to reality by her words. “Serial killing is about being seen,” she said thoughtfully. Her contributions always resonated in a slightly different way. A womanly way, maybe. “The victims are meant to see their tormentor and therefore their murderer. A person doesn’t commit serial murders and then hide the victims. That would be something else. What are things like on that front? Has our man ever hidden a victim?”
Hultin flipped through pages again. “It doesn’t seem like it, based on a quick look, but if you think it’s important, you should investigate further.”
“I think pretty much all of us have had a vague sense that something is a bit wrong. Not a lot, but a little. He is bestially bloodthirsty but takes a fifteen-year break. He brings a fake passport to the airport but hasn’t booked a seat. He murders Hassel in the middle of the evening rush at one of the largest airports in the world without leaving a trace, but he doesn’t hide the body. He has all the attributes of a classic serial killer, but at the same time there’s a bit of a clinical hit-man professionalism to him. Does he really want to be seen? Or was he telling us where he was going? Can we also find a clue as to why he came here? We’ve discussed it before, but the combination seems not only dangerous but also wrong. Somehow.”
It was that somehow, if anything, that everyone could get on board with.
“Does it have something to do with Hassel personally, after all?” Hjelm dared to ask. “I’ve looked at his Maoist writings from the seventies, and they’re no trifling matter.” He picked at his bandaged eyebrow. “Let’s toy with the thought that the Kentucky Killer is KGB and that the wave of American murders is the result of Soviet imports. Hence the many unidentified victims. Did Hassel have some sort of information from the good old seventies that he couldn’t be allowed to divulge? Was he just one in a series of security risks or traitors or double agents? Maybe we could check unofficially with Larner to see if that idea has come up before.”
“In any case,” Kerstin Holm replied eagerly, “that could explain the long break. He-or maybe a whole cadre-was quite simply called home sometime shortly after Brezhnev’s death in the early eighties. The KGB decreased its activity then; that fits quite nicely. Then fifteen years later discontent spreads in Russia, the Communists make headway, agents are taken out of the deep freeze, and our friend is sent back to the United States to start afresh.”
“He’s finished with the American list and switches over to the Swedish one,” Hjelm took up the baton of their appealing relay. “He weighs the risks with professional precision: ‘How can I get the message to the intended victims that I’m coming, without getting caught myself?’ Because it obviously is a matter of being seen, but in a different way than we first thought; this is a matter of being seen by those who are to be punished. He’s on a crusade; his goal is to strike fear in the hearts of all traitors. They must be informed that the state isn’t dead, that it’s never possible to flee the Soviet state; that it’s in good health as a state within a state.”
“On the other hand,” Holm added, “he’s aware that initially the message will reach only the police. That means he’s now either waiting for the usual old leaks to start and for everything to come out, or else he’s aiming for the police and, if that’s the case, a very small group of police: just the ones he knows in advance will take up the case.”
“If anyone here in the A-Unit, or higher up, has a past that is similar to Lars-Erik Hassel’s,” Hjelm continued, “then he should probably be on guard.”
“And come forward,” said Holm.
“Come out of the closet,” said Hjelm.
It was quiet. Suddenly they had not only taken the leap to international politics and the aftermath of the Cold War-they had also dragged in the A-Unit personally. Could the Kentucky Killer really be that sophisticated?
Was he after one of them?
“What do we know about Mörner’s background?” Hjelm said wickedly.
In among the suspicious, sweeping glances, he caught Kerstin’s. It was the first time in a long time they’d exchanged pleased looks, which hid a great deal. She smiled a reserved and captivating smile.
Hultin did not smile. “Mörner is hardly a security risk for anyone other than himself,” he said sternly. “Is there anyone else who feels like coming out of the closet?”
No one else felt like it.
Hultin continued silkily, “All due respect to speculations, but this one deserves the paranoia prize of the year. From the banal fact that the body was discovered before the plane landed, you are drawing the elegant conclusion that the KGB is targeting the A-Unit, that the entire wave of serial murders in the United States is based on Soviet indoctrination, that the twenty-four victims, whom you have in no way investigated more closely, were Soviet traitors, that all of this has gone over the heads of the FBI, and that one of your close colleagues has had contact with the KGB. You really covered a lot.”
“But wasn’t it fun?” Hjelm said just as silkily.
Hultin ignored this rejoinder and raised his voice: “If this has anything to do with international political power plays, then we are a very, very small piece in the game. Neither Larner nor I has overlooked that risk. But if it is the case, it hardly looks the way you’re describing it. We wouldn’t be able to see more than the contours of it.”
“Anyway, the point is,” said Holm, “that there’s a lot we can’t see.”
“Let’s do this,” said Hultin in a conciliatory tone. “You, Kerstin, take on the American victims: make a close study of who they actually were and what the FBI says about them, and see if there is any sort of link among them, or between them and Sweden. See if you can find anything from your point of view that the FBI might have missed from theirs. It’s a hard nut to crack, so to speak, but blame yourself.”
Hultin rummaged through his papers and seemed, for a second, to be as disorganized as they were. Then he pulled himself together. “This meeting was actually meant for Jorge, who spent the whole night surfing the Internet.”
Chavez was sitting in a corner, exhausted. For a person who spent a lot of time on the Net, with all its virtual cross-connections, paranoia was always a temptation, and he appeared tempted. But also very, very tired.
“Well,” he said, “I don’t know if we can bear to listen to much more right now. But I’ve chatted for several hours with a group that is well hidden on the Net, namely FASK, Fans of American Serial Killers, a shady organization whose Web site required some finesse and, I’ll admit it, a financial contribution to get into. The Kentucky Killer goes quite simply by the designation K, and the crazies in FASK consider him to be a great hero. They knew that K had killed again but not, as far as I could tell, that he had made his way to Sweden, which probably indicates that their contacts, fortunately, don’t go that high up.”
“I hope you didn’t leave behind a bunch of tracks that would lead here,” said Hultin, who had only moderate insights into the ring-dance of the Web.
“I was well disguised,” Chavez said laconically. “Anyway, they had a whole bunch of theories about K that it might be good for us to be aware of. Most of them were crazy ideas like Kerstin and Paul’s, but others were more sensible. Even they think there’s some sort of professionalism involved. A few think he’s high up in the military. Apparently there was a secret commander behind the Vietnam task force Commando Cool who was somehow directly below the president. His identity is unknown; that was the only thing Larner never caught, but in these circles he goes by the name Balls; apparently they’ve never seen The Pink Panther. The rumor is that Balls personally invented the notorious vocal cord pincers, and that since then he has occupied a central position within the Pentagon. Larner’s suspect, the guy with the country singer name, who died in the car crash-”