Read Online The Swede by Robert Karjel - Free Book Online Page A

fternoon. The sun had passed its zenith only an hour before, and the heat lay like a lid over the island. But he couldn’t sit and stare at his hotel room. Grip decided to go out for a run.
    Keeping his pace slow, he got to know the base through its streets and back roads. There was no risk getting lost: the main part of the island was barely more than half a mile wide. He ran past the harbor, located on the inner side of the atoll, saw a couple of ships docked there, a few gray-painted warships anchored farther out. Ten minutes to the south, he came to the airport. A path ran alongside it, a few hundred yards away. The air was filled with engine noise, but he saw no aircraft taking off or landing. Where the runway came to a stop, the road continued farther south. Here the vegetation was higher, but the trees still weren’t tall enough to cool him with their shadows. Humidity rose up from the greenery, making the air hard to breathe. Beside the paved trail were white patches of coral sand, and between branches he caught glimpses of the sea. But he couldn’t hear it, not with the airplane engines howling somewhere behind him. Then a passing convoy of trucks drowned out his impressions.
    Grip slowed down, walked for a minute. At the signs for ammunition stockpiles, he turned and started running again.
    New lines of trucks came from behind, belching out black diesel smoke. He glanced up at their flatbeds. They were loaded with bombs. Hundreds of them.
    What were they doing, the Americans? Were they planning to start a new war, or had they not yet ended the last one? What the hell were they doing, and what the hell was he getting himself into?

CHAPTER 10
    G RIP IS FICKLE, AND G RIP likes art.” Little more was ever said when someone at work sized him up. Then they turned to the usual: punctual, loyal, and well dressed. Everything that said nothing. (If you wanted a security police assignment as bodyguard for the royal family or a government official, you had to look sharp.)
    The art, that was the easiest to handle. Asked during a coffee break what he’d done over the weekend, he could honestly answer that he’d been to a gallery. No one was really interested in that, not there. Occasionally a young lawyer in the hallway would ask who his favorite painter was, hoping he’d say Dalí or Matisse. These types loved to have their good taste confirmed. Grip always replied “Lucien Freud,” which drew a blank look—and then they changed the subject, which was the goal. Moreover, it wasn’t true. Freud was good, but his naked yellow-gray bodies made Grip think too often of Auschwitz.
    Not that he was ashamed of his taste, but it was simpler. Or rather, it was predictable: exactly what a policeman who suddenly takes an interest in art would fall for. Mainstream. Reproduced on posters you could buy at Åhléns department store and slap up over the couch. But Grip had liked Edward Hopper’s paintings as long as he could remember. Their names alone: Cape Cod Evening , Nighthawks , Early Sunday Morning —this was art for lonely people.
    The fickle part was harder. Some saw him as a hero. Grip and the women, world champion of one-week relationships and one-night stands. Two in a single night, a colleague’s estranged wife, many more. There were stories about him, one more outrageous than the next. The attic apartment he’d inherited on Norrmälarstrand, overlooking the Stockholm waterfront, didn’t hurt. At least, that was what he said when drinking a few beers with colleagues in the sauna.
    Grip had been hungry ever since the first youthful spots on his sheets. Wanting to try what others only fantasized about, finding his way to the fearless ones who laughed back, the ones who also wanted it. Games with new positions had started before the end of adolescence. Later: bruises, leather straps, and candles—anything that excited—on airplanes, in hotel elevators with the emergency stop button pushed. A grunting nocturnal animal,