After the Monsoon: An unputdownable thriller that will get your pulse racing!. Robert Karjel

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.”

       12

      Grip had managed to get to bed before midnight but soon woke up again, freezing. Several times, he wrestled with the hotel’s air-conditioning controls, increasingly annoyed. Finally, as the clock by his bed turned to four, he gave up and took a sleeping pill. Most of the morning disappeared in its haze. The rest of the day, he kept to himself. Read the report and the personnel files, pondered, planned, called Mickels and then a few others. Made sure both suits that had been lying in his suitcase got pressed. Easily arranged, at the Kempinski.

      The hotel stood alone on a peninsula north of downtown. Its palm groves and lush gardens were enclosed by sand-colored walls, which cut straight lines through the barren landscape. On the inside was abundance, for a select few; on the outside, patches of stubby grass and plastic bottles spinning in the sea breeze. But there was no barbed wire, and no shards of glass poking up, not like on the walls in the wealthy residential neighborhoods. Someone had been thoughtful. The impression was meant to be inviting; people were meant to see an oasis. And for those who knew exactly which credit card to flash, it truly was a place out of One Thousand and One Nights.

      Opinions differed as to whether it was a sheikh or the Chinese who owned this twenty-first-century take on a fairy-tale palace. Did it matter? What mattered was that the Swiss hoteliers pulling the strings behind the scenes knew exactly whom to hire. The local middle-class daughters worked the reception desk, smiling shyly and adorably, having wasted years studying languages at foreign universities so they could serve Germans wanting to park closer to the main door and Chinese wanting massage appointments at the spa. The Filipino maids managed to do the impossible, keeping every horizontal surface free from dust without being visible themselves, and making sure not to miss all the nooks and arabesques. This was fabulous Islamic architecture, the Alhambra reimagined: geometric patterns covered the tiles and lanterns, while the colonnades and ornately carved wooden panels created a kind of labyrinth. It was rare to have an unobstructed view, and generally many things were not to be fully seen but only imagined at the Kempinski.

      There was a French pâtisserie, and in the evenings, the Egyptian singers in the Lebanese dance bands, who smiled down from the posters, did their best imitations of Umm Kulthum at one of the hotel bars. Everyone was supposed to feel at home, yet at the same time get a whiff of something foreign, even exotic. Like the fact that the outdoor pool was chilled. This was one of the first things the hotel told its guests, so they’d understand that the hotel had thought of everything.

      That afternoon, Grip slowly swam laps, cutting through the fog that lingered from the previous night. The pool was lined in deep blue mosaics, and its chilled water felt pleasant in the shimmering heat. He showered in his room and put on his freshly pressed linen suit. The tie seemed like overkill, but he had that dinner to go to. Earlier in the day, he’d arranged for a rental car, and at lunch, Mickels had stopped by with entry cards for both the port and the French base. Now, he could move around.

      Grip left the car in the shade of some containers on the dock and walked the last hundred meters to the warship’s gangway. He’d said he wanted to meet the MovCon unit at five o’clock; now it was quarter past. They were soldiers, so they were sitting where they’d been told to, looking at the clock.

      The group was waiting in a small mess hall for the ship’s crew. It looked like the common room of a dorm, with its shelves of battered DVDs, game consoles, and computer games. Five pairs of soldiers’ eyes told him he was late. Grip wanted them to start off feeling they had an advantage.

      “Hi,” he said. He took a chair and sat down, as they’d already formed a U around him. Grip pushed autopilot, letting his mouth babble on about his assignment and his investigative mandate. He spewed nonsense while he looked them in the eyes, the whole circle, again and again. All between twenty and thirty. Sleeves carefully rolled up on their uniforms, with just the right amount of wear. They all dressed in khakis, definitely not navy blue. Grip knew their personnel files by now, and every single one had a background in the army. His own linen suit was out of place. His mouth ran on, something about combatant status and international accords, a few heads nodding in agreement, as if they followed the nonsense point by point. Four men and one woman. A pair of tattooed forearms, a mustache, two with beards—probably a look the veterans brought home from Afghanistan. Three met his gaze, one looked around at the walls, the last stared down at the floor in front of him.

      “… therefore, I’ll be around for a few days asking some questions.” Nobody reacted, not the slightest movement. “So, when did you get the idea of heading off to the shooting range?” Grip looked at the person sitting directly in front of him.

      “The lieutenant told us.”

      “Lieutenant Slunga?”

      “Yes, the day before, around lunchtime last Saturday,” one of the beards answered. It was Fritzell, the biggest of the bunch, who no doubt lifted dumbbells when he had an extra hour or two.

      “And what time did you go?”

      “At three.” This was Fredrik Hansson, the sergeant who’d had to take over command. “I booked the shooting range and went to pick up ammunition. Did anyone have objections?” Hansson answered his own question. Laid-back style, expensive watch. “Most of us probably did.”

      “Most, probably?”

      “Well, I was against it,” said Hansson, “and I told Slunga the minute he came up with the damn idea.”

      “But he insisted?”

      “Yes.” Hansson shrugged.

      Grip let it go. “So the point was to do a little bonding between you and the locals.” Grip smiled. “You needed that?”

      Silence.

      Hansson looked at Jondelius, the other beard, who leaned forward and replied, “I think the Djiboutians had been pushing him, saying they wanted to shoot.”

      “And Slunga caved in to the pressure, just like that?”

      “Yes.”

      “And the Djiboutians, what did they do, the day after the shooting?”

      “The next day, only two showed up—Mr. Nazir, the foreman, and his nephew,” answered Philippa Ekman, the only woman in the room, speaking up without a look from Hansson. “Where the others went, who knows?”

      “And that means more work for you, delivering supplies to the Sveaborg before she casts off again?”

      “It’s okay. Mr. Nazir hired six new people today.”

      “I see.”

      Philippa Ekman nodded. The mood among those in the room remained total self-confidence. It was in their body language, and in that “bring-it-on” look in their eyes.

      “Just СКАЧАТЬ