Читать книгу After the Monsoon: An unputdownable thriller that will get your pulse racing! - Robert Karjel - Страница 16

“See you later.”

“Sure,” Grip replied, opening the door to Mickels’s jeep at the gangway of the HMS Sveaborg.

The dock was nearly a kilometer long, but the Sveaborg was the only ship there. Huge container cranes loomed, unmoving and seemingly abandoned, on either side of her. Whether their red-brown color was rust or the original paint was difficult to say. In the late afternoon, the sun shifted from white to yellow, and the only human in sight was the watch officer.

An hour before, when they’d left the French base in Mickels’s car, Grip had said on a whim, “Can’t we go to the shooting range first?”

It turned out that all Mickels had to do was make a call from his cell, since the shooting range was officially part of the US base. Fifteen minutes later, Grip stepped onto the dusty gravel. Just as he’d expected, the place was completely surrounded by desert, with the city barely visible as a gray zone to the southeast, and, in the other direction, the silhouettes of distant mountains in the haze. The place felt alien, a no-man’s-land. After a few steps, the black of his shoes disappeared under the fine dust. He kicked an empty shell. There were hundreds near where he stood. How many bullets were buried in that embankment—and which one was the one?

In front of the mound, he saw the big rusty stain in the sand, shapeless and darkly ominous. When Grip pressed the toe of his shoe into the middle of it, the bloody sand cracked like crusty snow. Tens of thousands of bullets and shell casings, six identical assault rifles in a locker. Here was a job to keep the forensics technicians busy for a decade. A troubling thought. This shooting range in the desert, this blank space that gave up nothing. Only silence. If he were looking for the right questions to ask, he wouldn’t find them here. Grip did a dutiful lap, but then flattened the stain with his shoe and nodded to Mickels that they could get back in the car.

The empty dock looked as battered and unchanging as the desert. And just as with the bloodstain, Grip saw the Sveaborg as an island of uncertainty. Not an intruder exactly, but out of place.

“You’ll find the duty officer on the third deck,” said the watch officer, once Grip had presented his ID. He walked up the gangway and into the shade below the helicopter deck.

“Welcome aboard!” said a man in a navy T-shirt and shorts. He wasn’t wearing the khakis of the watch officer on the dock: everything past the gangway was Africa and desert, but everything on board was pure Sweden. The man led the way. It cooled off as soon as they reached the ship’s interior, passing the whirling fans and the clatter of activity in that endless maze of gray corridors and steep ladders. Even if Grip wouldn’t admit it, the layout was confusing. He could never have found his way back out if he’d had to. They moved inward and upward. Gradually the detailing became more polished and a little quieter, and then they came to a door made of varnished wood. The man knocked, and when a voice replied within, he said only, “Please,” and disappeared.

The door opened. Grip left the noisy jumble behind and saw in front of him: power expressed in mahogany and fine rugs. Also, it was two against one. The captain’s cabin resembled the boardroom of a shipping company, down to the pair of ship portraits on the walls. The captain himself sat in a corner sofa, with his arms confidently outstretched. The first officer stood to the side, and slightly in front. A well-rehearsed chamber play, Grip thought, taking a few more steps forward.

“Welcome aboard,” the first officer added. He was the third person wearing a Swedish uniform who’d said that to Grip in the past few hours, only now, he didn’t buy it. The captain nodded quickly; he was the meaty type who gave the impression of being very busy. Always making people feel he’d rather be doing something else. The first officer was dark and more chiseled, with a penetrating gaze.

“Right, you’re the one from the police,” he said.

“Security police,” Grip corrected him. That little addition was rarely a disadvantage, when it came to balance of power.

“Yes, this is tragic,” continued the first officer. “We’re still … shaken.” He seemed to mean it.

The captain drummed impatiently on the leather sofa. “Tragic, but completely out of bounds.”

The first officer followed his lead. “We didn’t know anything beforehand about the excursion to the shooting range.” The captain’s career had to be protected, no blotches on his record. “You’ve got everything there, in our report about the incident.” The first officer nodded toward a printout on the coffee table, which was otherwise bare.

“Thanks, I already received a copy from Mickels.”

The captain stopped himself, just as he was sliding the report over.

Mickels would catch hell for that, Grip thought, for upstaging his boss with an outsider.

“By the way, where are you holding Slunga’s remains?”

The captain looked vacantly at Grip, who’d directed the question his way.

“Where’s the body?” Still that same look, and Grip realized that he didn’t know. The captain only waited, hoping to be rescued.

“We’re keeping it on board,” said the first officer. “In the cold room. We have a couple of mortuary compartments, just in case.”

“How convenient. Autopsy?”

“We’re a combat unit, not a forensics clinic. He’s down there, in the same condition as when he came in.”

“Excellent, then at least there’s one thing that’s been left untouched.”

“Excuse me, what are you driving at?”

“Just that everything seems to keep rolling along, even though a person has just been shot to death.”

“Yes, it probably looks that way,” replied the first officer, “but that’s because we have other problems to deal with. It’s real here. Every extra hour in port is an hour lost at sea. Out there, ships are getting hijacked and people are being shot all the time.”

“And a dead Swede …”

“An accident at a shooting range in Djibouti is tragic, but the world doesn’t stop for it. So what do you want us to do differently?”

Well, what the hell did he want? They couldn’t have isolated all the Swedes in the MovCon unit, he realized that. Was it the report that annoyed him, slapped together and approved so quickly? No, it wasn’t that either. Or not that alone, but the way it all added up: the atmosphere of arrogance. Expecting that he’d made the journey simply to sign off on their version. He had no other theory than the one they were feeding him, but it all seemed so simple, the slightest question met by a perfectly reasonable answer. What did he want? He didn’t want to feel stupid, but he did now, because he had nothing else to go on.

Before Grip answered, the captain, who seemed uncomfortable with the tone, cut in. “Everyone under my command has received an explicit order from me to cooperate with your police investigation. Your inquiry, that is.”

“And you think you need to give an order,” Grip said, “for that to happen, I mean?” Now he was being rude, and he knew it.

Silence.

“When do you head back out to sea?” Grip asked instead.

“Two days from now.” It was the first officer, stepping in once again. He held Grip in his gaze. “MovCon will be busy transporting matériel to the ship until then, but of course you can question anyone, anytime. I think Mickels has given you background on who they are and how they work.”

“He has.”

“And what about the Djiboutians?”

“Only that the local police have arrested the man accused of firing the shot.”

“What goes on there is completely beyond our control,” said the captain.

“And where can I find the rest of the Africans?” Grip asked.

“I spoke with Sergeant Hansson, who took over the unit after Slunga,” said the first officer. “Apparently, most of the locals quit after this incident, and I’m afraid they’ll be difficult to track down.”

“It is what it is. But the Swedes are all back at work?”

“Of course.”

“Well then, I’ll want to question them tomorrow, the whole gang at once.”

“Question them? You mean you already have suspicions?”

“Journalists interview, and police question, that’s all.”

The first officer shrugged.

“We …” The captain sounded conciliatory. “We’re thinking of holding a small dinner tomorrow, here on board, and we’d like you to come. At seven, that was the idea.”

“Dinner, thank you. And I guess MovCon is busy during the day, so I’ll meet with them at five. That should leave them enough time to do what they need to.”

“Think jacket.”

Grip didn’t understand.

“For dinner tomorrow. If that works.”

Grip, who hadn’t changed since he landed, stood there without a tie, looking rumpled. What was this about, he wondered, some sort of game, giving him a dress code?

“Jacket, of course,” Grip replied with a nod. “And my questioning?”

“I’ll take it up with Mickels,” replied the first officer.

Then there was silence again.

“For me, there’s just one detail left before I call it a day,” Grip said. “Where am I staying?”

“Hm,” said the first officer, taking a moment to remember. “The Sheraton was completely booked, so it must be the Kempinski. A night there costs a bloody fortune, but that’s what’s available, from what I understand.”

“The Kempinski?”

“The best Djibouti has to offer.”

Grip had done his homework. The Kempinski. Not just the best in Djibouti, but possibly the best anywhere in Africa. Did they want to smoke him out, get him to stay as short a time as possible, fearing what some police chief would say about his travel expenses?

“That will be perfect.” The navy men were apparently accustomed to a different kind of boss.

“Until seven o’clock, tomorrow, then,” said the captain. Time to go.

“The quartermaster will drive you to your hotel,” said the first officer, glancing at the clock. “He’s out running an errand in town. It shouldn’t be long. You can wait for him in the officers’ mess.”

Grip hadn’t taken more than one step toward the door before the first officer noticed his hesitation. He had no idea how to get out. The maze had won.

“I’ll call someone on watch to show you the way.”