Even so, it seemed to him that he had never seen them before, never mind held them in his hands.
Chapter 7
The destroyer Svea left Galärvarv Quay at 18.15 that same evening. At midnight, they emerged from the Stockholm archipelago and headed south-south-east and raised their speed to twelve knots. The north wind was squally, eight to twelve metres per second.
That night Lars Tobiasson-Svartman clung tightly to his lead. He lay awake for hours, thinking about his wife and her fragrant skin. Occasionally he also thought about the mission that lay ahead.
Chapter 8
At dawn, after a night’s fitful sleep riddled with vague and elusive dreams, he left his cabin and went on deck. He found a place on the lee side, where he knew he could not be seen from the bridge.
One of his secrets was hidden in a rolled-up chart in his cabin. That is where he kept the designs for the destroyer Svea. The vessel had been constructed by master shipbuilder Göthe Wilhelm Svenson at the Lindholmen yard. After his time as an engineer at the Royal Naval Engineering Establishment in 1868, Svenson carved out an astonishing career for himself as a shipbuilder. In 1881, at the age of fifty-three, he had been appointed Director-in-Chief of the Royal Naval Engineering Establishment.
The very day Tobiasson-Svartman had been told that Svea would be the base for his secret mission, he wrote to Svenson and asked for a copy of the construction designs. He gave as justification his ‘inveterate and perhaps somewhat ridiculous interest in collecting designs of naval vessels’. He was prepared to pay one thousand kronor for the drawings.
Three days later a courier arrived from Gothenburg. The man who handed over the plans was a clerk by the name of Tånge. He had put on his best suit Tobiasson-Svartman assumed it was Svenson who had instructed him to be elegantly dressed.
Tobiasson-Svartman had not doubted for a second that the drawings would be for sale. A thousand kronor was a lot of money, even for a successful engineer like Göthe Wilhelm Svenson.
Chapter 9
He clung to the ladder, trying to follow the rolling of the ship with his body. He recalled the evening he had spent in his living room in Wallingatan, poring over the drawings. That was when his journey had effectively begun.
It was the end of July, the heat was oppressive and everybody was waiting for the outbreak of the war, which now seemed inevitable. The only question was when the first shots would be fired and by whom, at whom. Newspaper offices filled their windows with highly charged reports. Rumours were started and spread, only to be denied immediately; nobody knew anything for certain, but everyone was convinced that they alone had drawn the correct conclusions.
A succession of invisible telegrams flew back and forth across Europe, between kaisers, generals and ministers. The messages were like a stray but deadly flock of birds.
On his desk was a newspaper cutting with a photograph of the German strike-cruiser Goeben. The 23,000-tonne vessel was the most handsome yet most frightening ship he had ever set eyes on.
His wife came into the room and stroked him gently on the shoulder.
‘It’s getting late. What are you doing that’s so important?’
‘I’m studying the ship I shall have to join soon. When it’s time for my mystery voyage.’
She was still stroking his shoulder.
‘Mystery voyage? Surely you can tell me where you’re going?’
‘No. I can’t tell even you.’
Her fingers caressed his shoulder. Her hand barely touched his shirt, yet he could feel her movements deep down inside him.
‘What do all those lines and figures mean? I can’t even see that they represent a ship.’
‘I like being able to see what is not seeable.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘The idea. What lies behind it all. The will, perhaps? The intention? I’m not sure. But there’s always something there that you cannot see at first.’
She sighed impatiently. She stopped stroking his shoulder and instead started tapping anxiously at his collarbone. He tried to work out if she were sending him a message.
In the end she took her hand away. He imagined it was a bird taking flight.
I am not telling her the truth, he thought. I am keeping from her what I am really doing. Not admitting that I am studying the plans in order to find a point on deck where nobody could see me from the bridge.
What I am really doing is searching for a hiding place.
Chapter 10
He gazed out to sea.
Ragged shreds of mist, a solitary line of seabirds.
Recalling memories involved meticulous care and patience. What happened afterwards, that evening in July, just before war was declared? Those oppressively hot days and the millions of young men all over Europe hastily called up?
After studying the drawings for nearly an hour he had found the spot where his hiding place would be.
He pushed the plans aside. From the street outside he could hear the neighing of a restless dray horse. In another room of their large flat Kristina was rearranging the china figurines she had inherited from her mother. There was a clinking noise, as if from muffled bells. Although they had been married for ten years and scarcely an evening went by without her rearranging the figurines on the shelves, not a single one had ever fallen and shattered.
But afterwards? What happened then? He could not remember. It was as if a leak had sprung in the flow of memories. Something had seeped away.
It had been a windless July evening, the temperature twenty-seven degrees. Occasional rumbles of thunder had drifted in from the Lidingö direction, where dark clouds were gathering from the sea.
He thought about those clouds. He was troubled by the fact that he found it easier to recall the shape of clouds than his wife’s face.
He brushed such thoughts aside and gazed into the dawn. What exactly can I see? he thought. Dark rocky outlines early on a Swedish autumn morning. At some point during the night the duty officer had ordered a change of course to a more southerly direction. Their speed was about seven, possibly eight knots.
Five knots is peace, he thought. Seven knots is a suitable speed when you are being sent out on a secret and urgent mission. And 27.8 knots means war. That is the highest speed achieved by the Goeben, although her steam engines were rumoured to have a construction fault causing severe leakages.
It struck him that you can predetermine the moment when a war starts, but never when it will finish.
Chapter 11
On the starboard side, where he stood concealed by the companionway, the shoreline could just be made out in the dawn light. Rocks and skerries rose and fell in the choppy sea.
This is where a land starts and ends, Tobiasson-Svartman thought. But the boundary keeps shifting, there is no precise point where the sea comes to an end and land begins. The rocks are barely visible above the water. In olden days seafarers used to regard these rocks and reefs and outcrops as peculiar and terrifying sea monsters. I can also imagine the rocks slowly climbing up out of the sea becoming animals, but they do not terrify me. For me, they are no more than thought-provoking but perfectly harmless hippos rearing up among the waves, of a kind found only in the Baltic Sea.
This is where a land starts and ends, he thought once more. A rock leisurely straightening its back. A rock by the name of Sweden.
He walked to the rail and peered into the blue-grey water rushing along the hull of the destroyer. The sea never gives way, he thought. The sea never sells its skin. In the winter this sea is like frozen skin. Autumn is all calm, waiting. With sudden gusts of howling gales. Summer is no more than a brief glint in the mirror-calm water.