He found a small hollow in the ground and lay down, flattening his body. He cupped his hands and held up the igniter. He knew that he was still close to the cairn — dangerously close, in fact.
He bent his head and pressed the button, producing a spark that ignited the thin layer of explosive inside the plastic tube.
The flame burned incredibly fast, faster than the eye could see. Moving at a speed of two kilometres per second, a lightning flash shot along the tube and into the bunker, where the spark ignited a series of detonators inside the hole that had taken Aron several weeks to dig out.
Deep inside the hole lay the main charge. The detonators did their job.
The month of August began with a dull roar over Kalmar Sound.
At quarter to one in the morning there was an explosion, a protracted boom that echoed across the bay. It could be heard as far away as the Småland coast and sounded like a thunderclap.
Aron was dangerously close. He pressed his body down in the hollow, less than fifty metres from the cairn; he had no idea whether he would survive.
The plastic explosive had been placed one metre down in the ground below the centre of the cairn, and the effect when it went up was as if a slumbering phantom had awoken and risen up from the depths of the earth.
Everything inside the bunker was destroyed.
The concrete walls cracked, the cement floor turned into gravel, and the locked metal door splintered into jagged shards that went whirling out into the dip.
The explosion caused a part of the ridge above the bunker to collapse and tumble down on to the shore. A huge rock trundled across the dunes like a steamroller, crushing the Kloss family’s boathouse and everything it contained: fishing nets, deckchairs, life jackets and cool bags.
But the main force of the blast went straight upwards, where there was no concrete — just soft earth, loose gravel and all those rounded stones that Sven Fredh had once piled up to build a cairn on the ridge.
They were lifted from the ground, up into the night sky, scattering through the air as if a volcano had erupted. The smaller stones were carried out over the Sound, plummeting down into the water, where Veronica Kloss was sitting in the family’s motor launch, waiting for her brother Kent to arrive with Aron’s body. Veronica kept her eyes shut and clutched the wheel as she heard the debris raining down on the boat; by some miracle, the boat escaped serious damage.
Aron stayed where he was, flat on the ground with his arms over his head; he could feel metal and stone whizzing past and landing all around him.
But most of the cairn went in a different direction: inland, in a dense shower.
Somewhere above the coast road, gravity took over from the blast, catching the stones one by one and dragging them downwards.
Gravel fell, earth fell. And the stones began to fall, too, like an invisible enemy in the darkness. Many of them headed straight for Villa Kloss, for the nearest house, which was Kent’s.
They came crashing down in his garden, on his freshly sanded decking, in his swimming pool and on to the tiles on his roof.
Niklas Kloss was alone in the house. He was in bed in one of the guest rooms at the back, wide awake following the explosion. The windows had shattered, but as the sound of breaking glass died away he heard something else: a loud hammering on the roof. Tiles broke, rafters gave way.
Niklas lay there frozen in terror, waiting for the ceiling above him to collapse, but it held. Then suddenly the hammering stopped. An echo of the explosion bounced back and forth across the inlet, then that, too, faded away.
Everything went quiet.
In the dip below the ridge, Aron began to move. His clothes and skin were covered in dust, but he raised his head, realizing that he was still alive. Slowly, he got to his feet, thinking about the cheerful man from Esbo who had once taught him how to bury dynamite, how to adjust the angle. And how to set it off.
He glanced over at the coast road, at Villa Kloss, and saw black holes in the ground and in the roof.
The stones from the cairn had come crashing down like cannonballs.
Gerlof
John had been happy for him to stay over, and Gerlof had phoned the residential home to explain his absence. They had gone to bed at about eleven o’clock, but Gerlof hadn’t been able to get to sleep. He kept on thinking about Veronica Kloss.
His thoughts went round and round in circles, but at last he dropped off into a deep and dreamless sleep — until, all of a sudden, the ground shook.
The foundations of John’s little cottage vibrated, as if a tsunami had rolled through the bedrock. The windows rattled and the furniture shifted. Somewhere, a newspaper slid to the floor.
He heard John call out and stumble out of bed in the room next door.
Gerlof raised his head from the pillow and, at the same moment, he heard a dull roar. It was like a thunderbolt, but the sound didn’t come from the sky; it seemed to come from the south-west. From the shore. And it was followed by a series of smaller bangs, as if objects were thudding down.
An explosion?
Gerlof had always been afraid of mines when he was at sea, but he knew this wasn’t a mine.
He heard heavy footsteps. His bedroom door opened, and John appeared. ‘Gerlof? Are you awake?’
‘I am.’
‘Did you hear the bang?’
‘I did.’
They both listened for a moment, but everything was quiet. Very quiet.
John switched on the light, but nothing happened. The power was off.
‘What shall we do?’ he said, moving over to the window.
‘There’s not much we can do,’ Gerlof said. ‘It might have been gas cylinders... Can you see any sign of a fire out there?’
John shook his head. ‘It’s pitch dark.’
‘In that case, as I said, there’s not much we can do.’
‘No...’
‘Perhaps you could light some candles,’ Gerlof suggested. ‘And your old stove.’
‘Good idea,’ John said. ‘I’ll make some coffee.’
He hurried off to the kitchen. When John used to get stressed at sea, Gerlof had always given him a job to do. It calmed him down.
Gerlof stayed in bed, waiting for someone to phone or come knocking on the door, but everything remained quiet.
Something had happened in his village. Something terrible.
Aron Fredh, he thought. Aron had ramped up his war against the Kloss family, and Gerlof had been unable to stop him.
When he didn’t hear anything else from outside, Gerlof began to sink back into the darkness. He didn’t really want coffee. Not at this time of night.
Much later, after perhaps an hour, the sound of sirens began to approach from the main road, but by then Gerlof was fast asleep once more.
Lisa
Lisa had been pushed to the ground by Paulina, but she saw the explosion split the darkness. And felt it.
The glow was like an intense, golden-red sun on the ridge behind her, a sun that flared up and died away in a second. The next moment, she heard the roar and experienced something that felt like an earthquake. The ground beneath her vibrated, and the entire coast seemed to shake.
Ragnarök, she thought as she tried to crawl forward, away from the chaos. It was impossible, because Paulina was in the way, so she put her arms over her head to protect herself instead.