Depths - By Henning Mankell & Laurie Thompson Page 0,77
to all the gunfire. Nothing seems to inspire the market more than the outbreak of war. The snag, of course, is that the market can be capricious. However, your shares are stable at the present time.'
'I need to turn some of those shares into cash.'
'I see. And what figure do you have in mind, Commander Svartman?'
I do not have a double-barrelled name here either, he thought. As far as the bank is concerned I am simply Lars Svartman, without the protection that my mother's surname gives me.
Annoyed, he said: 'Might I point out that my surname is Tobiasson-Svartman? It is several years now since I changed my name.'
Håkansson looked at him in surprise. Then he started leafing through his papers.
'I apologise for the fact that both the bank and I had overlooked your change of name. I shall put that right immediately.'
Håkansson was surprised again. 'That's a lot of money. It means that quite a lot of shares will have to be sold.'
'I realise that.'
Håkansson thought for a moment. 'I would suggest in that case that we offload some forestry shares. When do you need access to the money?'
'Within a week.'
'And how would you like the money?'
'Hundreds, fifties, tens and fives. An equal amount of each denomination.'
Håkansson made a note. 'Shall we say Wednesday next week?'
'That will suit me fine.'
Tobiasson-Svartman left the bank. It is like getting drunk, he thought. Deciding to squander money. To be not like my father, all that damned saving all the time.
He went to Kungsträdgården and watched the skaters on the outdoor rink. An elderly man in shabby clothes came up to him, begging. Tobiasson-Svartman dismissed him curtly. Then changed his mind and hurried after him. The man reacted as if he were about to be attacked. Tobiasson-Svartman gave him a one-krona coin and did not wait to be thanked.
CHAPTER 121
That evening they talked about the mission to come. The silence in the room rose and fell. He closed the brass doors in the tiled stove with the poker. The room grew darker.
'I'm always afraid when you go away,' she said.
A mission can always be dangerous, he thought. Especially this time, when there is no mission.
'There's no reason for you to be afraid,' he said. 'There might have been if we were involved in the war. But we're not.'
'The mines, all those terrible explosions. Ships sinking in only a few seconds.'
'I shall be a long way away from the war. My job is to make sure that as few ships as possible are affected by the catastrophe.'
'What exactly are you doing?'
'I'm preserving a secret. And creating new secrets. I'm guarding the door.'
'What door?'
'The invisible door between what a few people know and what others ought not to know.'
She was about to ask another question, but he raised his hand. 'I've already said too much. Now I'd like you to go to bed. By tomorrow you'll have forgotten everything I've said.'
'Is that an order?' she asked with a smile.
'Yes,' he said. 'That's an order.'
It is even an order that is secret.
CHAPTER 122
March turned into one long wait. On several occasions he went to Naval Headquarters without being able to get an explanation for why it was taking so long for written confirmation of the length of his leave to come through. Lieutenant Berg was never in his office. Adjutant Jakobsson had also disappeared. Nobody could tell him anything. But everybody insisted that nothing had happened to change the situation. It was simply a matter of excess bureaucracy as a result of the war.
One cold, clear evening at the end of March he left his flat in Wallingatan, after saying goodbye to his wife, who was not feeling well. He walked to the top of Observatoriekullen and studied the night sky.
Once a year, usually on a clear winter's night, he would make a pilgrimage to the stars. When he was a young cadet he had studied the star charts and read several astronomical textbooks.
He stood next to the dark observatory building and gazed up at the stars.
It seemed to him that the clear night sky and the sea were similar, like diffuse and not altogether reliable reflections of each other. The Milky Way was an archipelago, like a string of islands off the coast up there in space. The stars gleamed like lanterns, and he thought he could discern both green and red lights and all the time he was searching for navigable channels, routes between the stars where the biggest of