neck, just above his collar.
Tobiasson-Svartman frowned and fixed his eyes on the birthmark. Whenever he saw a mole on somebody's body he always tried to work out what it resembled. His father, Hugo Svartman, had a group of moles high up on his left arm. He imagined them to be an archipelago of small, anonymous islands, rocks and skerries. His white skin formed the navigable channels that combined and crisscrossed one another. Where were the deepest channels on his father's left arm? Which would be the safest route for a vessel to take?
The secret affinity with leads, measurements and distances characteristic of his life was based on that image and the memory of his father's birthmarks.
Lars Tobiasson-Svartman thought to himself: Deep down inside me I am still searching for unknown shallows, another unsounded depth, unexpected troughs. Even inside myself I need to chart and mark out a safely navigable channel.
Anders Höckert's birthmark on the back of his neck, he decided, resembled a wild beast, ready to charge, horns lowered.
Höckert opened the door to the cabin Tobiasson-Svartman had been allocated. He was on a secret mission and hence could not share a cabin with another of the ship's officers.
His luggage, the rolled-up charts and the brown bag containing his depth-sounding instrument were already stacked on the floor. Höckert saluted and left the cabin.
Tobiasson-Svartman sat down on his bunk and let the solitude envelop him. The engines were throbbing as the boilers were never shut down completely even when the vessel was in dock. He looked out of the porthole. The sky had turned blue, the drizzle had lifted. That cheered him up, or perhaps made him feel relieved. Rain tended to depress him, like small, almost invisible weights beating against his body.
For a moment he felt an urge to abandon ship.
But he did not move.
Then slowly he began to unpack his bags. His wife had carefully chosen every item of clothing for him. She knew what he liked best and would want to have with him. Each one was lovingly folded.
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