Part 27 (1/2)

'Yes,' said Bulldozer, 'first-cla.s.s job, boys. As I said. An excellent piece of work. But I still don't understand why you do this kind of thing yourselves.'

'No,' said Gunvald Larsson, 'you wouldn't understand that'

'Larsson, you're a peculiar man,' said Bulldozer.

Then the crumpled blue suit floated away with the public prosecutor inside it 'How the h.e.l.l... ?' said Gunvald Larsson when Bulldozer had vanished.

Martin Beck was wondering the same thing but said nothing.

It was all too simple. Bulldozer had tabs everywhere. He stuck his nose into everything and then tried to take the credit. Martin Beck had been almost certain that Bulldozer hadn't succeeded in placing an informer within the Murder Squad, but now it appeared that he did have a man in the Violent Crimes Squad.

Who?

Ek? Stromgren?

Stromgren seemed possible, but he'd never admit it 'Well,' said Ronn, 'the fun's over now, is it?'

'Fun?' Gunvald Larsson gazed at Ronn for a long time, but abstained from further comment.

Martin Beck was studying the boxbombs. The crime lab would shortly take care of them.

Four hundred yards away, Stromgren sat smoking behind the net curtain. Since his conversation with Bulldozer an hour earlier, he had done more or less nothing except chain smoke. He was thinking that perhaps now at last he would be transferred to Bulldozer's special group and get his much-sought-after promotion.

Benny Skacke was home in bed. His occupation at that moment was of a private nature.

'And where the h.e.l.l is Heydt?' said Gunvald Larsson dejectedly.

'Can't you think about anything else?' said Ronn. 'At least for the moment?'

'What, for instance?'

'Well, for instance, that I shot through that string. That was well nigh impossible.'

'How many points did you get at the last training compet.i.tion?'

'Nil,' said Einar Ronn, his neck reddening.

'd.a.m.n strong, that one,' said Gunvald Larsson again, grasping the small of his back.

Fifteen seconds later he repeated it to himself: 'Where the h.e.l.l is Heydt?'

27.

The formal proceeding against the two j.a.panese took place on the morning of the sixteenth and was one of the most farcical that had ever been enacted in any Stockholm courtroom.

In Sweden, the prosecutor in a case is supposedly appointed by drawing lots, presumably to create an illusion of justice. But if there had been any lot drawing, which was highly unlikely, then Bulldozer had certainly seen to it that his name appeared on all the lottery slips, because he behaved with a confident pomposity and an easy grandeur that made the very idea of anyone else in the role seem ridiculous. His suit was newly pressed, or rather had been earlier that day, his shoes polished, his tie a bright green with red oil-rigs, perhaps a personal gift from the Shah of Iran - which was what he himself maintained.

He had especially requested Martin Beck, Gunvald Larsson and Einar Ronn to be present, and the court was also packed with people who had come either out of sheer curiosity or else out of a sense of their duty to keep themselves informed. In the latter category were the National Police Commissioner and Stig Malm, who were enthroned on the front spectator bench. Slightly less prominent was the foxy-red halo around the Sapo chief's bald head. As far as was known, this was the first time Moller had shown himself in public since the twenty-first of November.

The two j.a.panese had been a.s.signed a defence counsel compared to whom Hedobald Braxen was Clarence Darrow and Abraham Lincoln rolled into one. After Gunvald Larsson's treatment, the larger of the two terrorists looked like a mummy in some old Boris Karloff movie, but the smaller smiled politely and bowed whenever anyone happened to look at him.

Everything was complicated by the fact that the two j.a.panese were now playing dumb, so interpreters were needed.

The weakest point in Bulldozer's case was that he did not in fact know the names of either of the accused. As an introduction, he read out fourteen different names from an Interpol list of wanted men. As each name was read out, the mummy and his more obliging friend shook their heads.

Finally the judge lost patience and allowed the interpreter to ask the j.a.panese for their names and dates of birth.

To this, the obliging one replied that their names were Kaiten and Kamikaze, and he also gave their birthdates. The mummy would not even speak.

Martin Beck and Gunvald Larsson looked at each other in astonishment, but no one else reacted. Clearly they were alone in knowing that Kaiten meant human torpedo, and Kamikaze suicide pilot. Actually, the men had also given the birthdates of Admiral Togo and Admiral Yamamoto, which would make them about a hundred and seventy and a hundred years old respectively, although anyone could see that neither of them was a day over thirty.

However, the Court swallowed all this information and the clerk industriously wrote it all down.

Bulldozer then declared them under reasonable suspicion of having committed a huge number of crimes, such as treason, attempted murder of the Prime Minister, the King, the American Senator, and eighteen other persons specified by name, including Gunvald Larsson, Martin Beck and Einar Ronn. He went on to armed subversion, damage to the city gas mains, illegal possession of. arms, illegal entry into the country, gross damage to the block of flats in Tanto, fraud, smuggling of arms, violent resistance to the police, preparation for drugs offences (they had found a bottle of cough medicine containing tincture of opium in the apartment), offences against the food laws (there had been a dismembered dachshund in the icebox), and illegal possession of a dog, forgery of doc.u.ments, and violation of the laws on games of chance. On the last charge, he had judged the strange wooden tiles as a game of chance.

When he reached that point, Bulldozer suddenly rushed out of the courtroom without a word of explanation. Everyone watched in astonishment. He came back a few minutes later, contentedly tripping ahead of six or seven labourers who came puffing in carrying a coffin-shaped wooden crate and a large folding table.

He proceeded to take quant.i.ties of material evidence out of the crate - parts of bombs, hand grenades, ammunition and so on. Each object was shown to the spectators and the judge, after which it was placed on the table.

The crate was still half full when Bulldozer took out the dachshund's head wrapped in cellophane, which he first showed to the National Police Commissioner and then to Stig Malm, who at once threw up on the floor. Encouraged by this success, Bulldozer took off the wrapping and thrust the head under the judge's nose, whereupon the judge took his handkerchief out of his top pocket, held it in front of his mouth and said in a choked voice, 'That will be sufficient, Mr Public Prosecutor, that's sufficient.'

Bulldozer then began to take out the remains of the decapitated dachshund, but the judge said emphatically, 'I said that would be sufficient.'

Bulldozer brushed a slight disappointment from his face with his tie, did a lap around the courtroom, stopped in front of the mummy, and said, 'I herewith request formal arraignment of Messieurs Kaiten and Kamikaze. May I add that I am expecting further evidence from abroad.'

The interpreter translated. The mummy nodded. The other j.a.panese smiled courteously and bowed.

The defence counsel now had the floor. He was a dry man, in appearance rather like a stubbed-out cigar, long since extinguished and abandoned.

Bulldozer looked absendy down into the crate. He picked out the hindquarters of the dachshund with its attached tail and demonstrated the evidence to the chief of State Police until the latter turned purple in the face.

'I oppose the arraignment,' said the defence counsel.

'Why?' asked the judge, a flash of genuine surprise in his voice.

The defence counsel sat in silence for a moment, then said, 'I don't really know.'

With this brilliant remark, the proceedings collapsed, the two j.a.panese were declared under formal arrest, and the spectators poured out In the apartment in Kapellgatan in Solna, Reinhard Heydt was lying on his bed, thinking.

He had just taken a bath and the route from the bathroom to the bed was covered with outspread white towels. He himself, on the other hand, was undressed. In the bathroom, he had looked at himself in the mirror for a long time and had made two discoveries: one, that his suntan had begun to fade; and two, that there was nothing he could do about it For the first time, a ULAG operation had been a total fiasco. Not only had they flopped, but two activists, including one of their best, had fallen into the enemy's hands alive.

Levallois had indeed escaped, but that was not much consolation.

Their enemies were countless; in this case they appeared to be primarily represented by the Swedish police. He had seen on television the person who was said to be the 'brain behind the capture of the two j.a.panese terrorists', Chief Public Prosecutor Sten Robert Olsson. He appeared to be a chubby-cheeked man with a startling tie and satisfied expression.

There was something fishy about it all. Had this Olsson, 'Bulldozer' as he was called, really been responsible for their defeat? Heydt found this difficult to believe - or rather, he was almost certain that it was an outright lie.