The White Lioness

Chapter Eleven

The apartment was in a high-rise complex in Hallunda.

Konovalenko parked outside late in the evening of Tuesday, April 28. He took his time on the journey up from Skane. Even though he liked driving fast and the powerful BMW invited high speeds, he was careful to stay within the speed limits. Just outside Jonkoping he observed grimly how a number of motorists had been waved down at the side of the road by the cops. As several of them had overtaken him, he assumed they had been caught in a radar speed trap.

Konovalenko had no confidence at all in the Swedish police. He assumed the basic reason for this was his contempt for the open, democratic Swedish society. Konovalenko not only mistrusted democracy, he hated it. It had robbed him of a large part of his life. Even if it would take a very long time to introduce it-perhaps it would never be a reality-he left Leningrad the moment he realized the old, closed Soviet society was past saving. The final straw was the failed coup in the fall of 1991, when a number of leading military officers and Politburo members of the old school tried to restore the former hierarchical system. But when the failure was plain for all to see, Konovalenko immediately started planning his escape. He would never be able to live in a democracy, no matter what form it took. The uniform he had worn ever since he joined the KGB as a recruit in his twenties had become an outer skin as far as he was concerned. And he just could not shed his skin. What would be left if he did?

He was not the only one to think like that. In those last years, when the KGB was subjected to severe reforms and the Berlin wall collapsed, he and his colleagues were always discussing what the future would look like. It was one of the unwritten rules of the intelligence service that somebody would have to be held responsible when a totalitarian society started to crumble. Far too many citizens had been subjected to treatment by the KGB, far too many relatives were eager to extract vengeance for their missing or dead kin. Konovalenko had no desire to be hauled before the courts and treated like his former Stasi colleagues in the new Germany. He hung a map of the world on his office wall and studied it for hours. He was forced to grit his teeth and accept that he was not cut out for life in the late twentieth century. He found it hard to imagine himself living in one of the brutal but highly unstable dictatorships in South America. Nor did he have any confidence in the home-rule leaders who were still in power in some African states. On the other hand, he thought seriously about building a future in some fundamentalist Arab country. In some ways he was indifferent to the Islamic religion, and in other ways he hated it. But he knew the governments ran both open and secret police forces with farreaching powers. In the end, though, he rejected this alternative as well. He thought he would never be able to handle the transformation to such a foreign culture, no matter which Islamic state he selected. Besides, he did not want to give up drinking vodka.

He had also considered offering his services to an international security company. But he lacked the necessary confidence; it was a world with which he was unfamiliar.

In the end, there was only one country he could contemplate. South Africa. He read whatever literature he could lay his hands on, but it was not easy to find much. Thanks to the authority still attached to KGB officers, he managed to track down and unlock a few literary and political poison cabinets. What he read confirmed his impression that South Africa would be a suitable place to build a future for himself. He was attracted by the racial discrimination, and could see how both the regular and secret police forces were well organized and wielded considerable influence.

He disliked people of color, especially blacks. As far as he was concerned, they were inferior beings, unpredictable, usually criminal. Whether such views constituted prejudice, he had no idea. He just decided that was the way things were. But he liked the thought of having domestics, servants, and gardeners.

Anatoli Konovalenko was married, but he was planning a new life without Mira. He had grown tired of her years ago. She was probably just as tired of him. He never bothered to ask her. All they had left was a routine, lacking in substance, lacking in emotions. He compensated by indulging in regular affairs with women he met through his work.

Their two daughters were already living their own independent lives. No need to worry about them.

As the empire collapsed all around him, he thought he would be able to melt into oblivion. Anatoli Konovalenko would cease to exist. He would change his identity, and perhaps also his appearance. His wife would have to exist as best she could on the pension she would receive once he was declared dead.

Like most of his colleagues, Konovalenko had organized a series of emergency exits over the years through which he could escape if necessary from a crisis situation. He had built up a reserve of foreign currency, and had a variety of identities at his disposal in the form of passports and other documents. He also had a strong network of contacts in strategically important positions in Aeroflot, the customs authorities, and the foreign service. Anybody belonging to the nomenklatura was like a member of a secret society. They were there to help each other, and as a group could guarantee that their way of life would not give way beneath them. Or so they thought, until the unthinkable collapse actually happened.

Toward the end, just before he fled, everything happened very quickly. He contacted Jan Kleyn, who was a liaison officer for the KGB and the South African intelligence service. They had met when Konovalenko was visiting the Moscow station in Nairobi-his first trip to the African continent, in fact. Jan Kleyn made it very clear that Konovalenko’s services could be useful to him and his country. He filled Konovalenko’s head with visions of immigration and a comfortable future.

But that would take time. Konovalenko needed an intermediate port of call after leaving the Soviet Union. He decided on Sweden. Several colleagues had recommended it. Apart from the high standard of living, it was easy to cross the borders, and at least as easy to keep out of the public eye; to be completely anonymous, if that was what you wanted. There was also a growing colony of Russians, many of them criminals, organized into gangs, that had started to operate in Sweden. They were often the first of the rats to leave the sinking ship, rather than the last. Konovalenko knew he would be able to benefit from these people. The KGB had always had excellent relations with the Russian criminal classes. Now they could be mutually helpful even in exile.

He got out of the car, and noted that there were blotches on the face of even this country, which was supposed to be an ideal model. The gloomy housing estate reminded him of both Leningrad and Berlin. It looked like future decay was already built into the facades. And yet he could see that Vladimir Rykoff and his wife Tania had done the right thing when they settled in Hallunda. They could live here in the anonymity they desired.

That I desire, he thought, correcting himself.

When he first came to Sweden, he used Rykoff to help him settle in quickly. Rykoff had been living in Stockholm since the beginning of the eighties. He had shot a KGB colonel in Kiev by mistake and fled the country. Because he had a dark complexion and looked like an Arab, he traveled as a Persian refugee and was rapidly granted refugee status, even though he did not speak a word of Persian. When he eventually received Swedish citizenship, he took back his real name, Rykoff. He was only an Iranian when he dealt with the Swedish authorities. In order to support himself and his supposedly Iranian wife, he carried out a few simple bank robberies while he was still living in a refugee camp near Flen. This produced a fair amount of capital to start out with. It also occurred to him that he could earn money by setting up a settlement service for other Russian immigrants who were making their way to Sweden, more or less legally, in increasing numbers. His somewhat unorthodox travel agency soon became well known, and there were times when he had more people than he could really cope with. He had various representatives of the Swedish authorities on his payroll, including at times people in the immigration office, and it all helped to give the agency the reputation of being efficient and thorough. He was sometimes irritated by the fact that it was so hard to bribe Swedish civil servants. But he generally managed it eventually, if he was careful how he went about it. Rykoff had also established the much appreciated custom of providing all new arrivals with a genuine Russian dinner in his apartment at Hallunda.

It did not take Konovalenko long to grasp that behind the hard exterior, Rykoff was in fact a weak character and easily led. When Konovalenko made a pass at his wife and she proved to be far from unwilling, he soon had Rykoff where he wanted him. Konovalenko arranged his life so that Rykoff did all the mundane legwork, all the boring routine assignments.

When Jan Kleyn contacted him and offered him the job of taking care of an African contract killer who was to carry out an important assassination in South Africa, it was Rykoff who saw to all the practical arrangements. It was Rykoff who rented the house in Skane, fixed the cars, and brought in the food supply. He dealt with the forgers and the weapon Konovalenko managed to smuggle out of St. Petersburg.

Konovalenko knew Rykoff had another virtue.

He never hesitated to kill, if necessary.

Konovalenko locked the car, picked up his bag, and took the elevator up to the fifth floor. He had a key, but he rang the doorbell instead. The signal was simple, a sort of coded version of the “Internationale.”

Tania opened the door. She stared at him in surprise when she saw no sign of Victor Mabasha.

“You’re here already?” she said. “Where’s the African?”

“Is Vladimir in?” asked Konovalenko, without bothering to answer.

He handed her his bag and stepped inside the apartment. It had four rooms and was furnished with expensive leather armchairs, a marble table, and the last word in hi-fi and video equipment. It was all very tasteless, and Konovalenko did not like living there. Right now, though, he had no alternative.

Vladimir emerged from the bedroom dressed in a silk robe. Unlike Tania, who was so slim, Vladimir Rykoff looked as if he’d been given an order to get fat-an order he’d been delighted to receive.

Tania prepared a simple meal and put a bottle of vodka on the table. Konovalenko told them as much as he thought they needed to know. But he said nothing about the woman he had been forced to kill.

The most important thing was that Victor Mabasha had suffered a mysterious breakdown. Now he was at large somewhere in Sweden, and had to be liquidated immediately.

“Why didn’t you do it in Skane?” asked Vladimir.

“There were certain difficulties,” Konovalenko replied.

Neither Vladimir nor Tania asked any more questions.

While he was driving to Stockholm, Konovalenko had thought carefully about what had happened, and what needed to happen now. It dawned on him that Victor Mabasha had only one possibility of leaving the country.

He would have to find Konovalenko. Konovalenko was the one with the passports and tickets; he was the one who could supply him with money.

Victor Mabasha would most probably make his way to Stockholm. He was probably there already. Konovalenko and Rykoff would be ready to receive him.

Konovalenko drank a few glasses of vodka. But he was careful not to get drunk. Even if that was what he most wanted to do right now, he had an important job to do first.

He had to call Jan Kleyn on the Pretoria telephone number he was only allowed to use in extreme cases of necessity.

“Go into the bedroom,” he said to Tania and Vladimir. “Close the door and switch the radio on. I have to make a telephone call, and I don’t want to be disturbed.”

He knew that both Tania and Vladimir would listen in if they had the chance and he wanted none of that. He needed to inform Jan Kleyn about the woman he had been forced to kill.

That would give him the perfect reason to imply that Victor Mabasha’s breakdown was in fact something positive. It would be obvious that it was entirely thanks to Konovalenko that the man’s weakness had been exposed before it was too late.

Killing the woman could also provide him with another benefit. It would be clear to Jan Kleyn, if he did not know already, that Konovalenko was absolutely ruthless.

When they were in Nairobi, that is the kind of person Jan Kleyn had said South Africa needed most of all right now.

White people with a disregard for death.

Konovalenko dialed the number he had memorized as soon as he was given it in Africa. During his many years as a KGB officer he had always tried to hone his powers of concentration and memory by memorizing telephone numbers.

He had to dial the string of numbers four times before they were picked up by the satellite over the equator and sent back to earth again.

Someone picked up the receiver in Pretoria.

Konovalenko recognized immediately the slow, hoarse voice.

He explained once again what had happened. As usual, he spoke in code. Victor Mabasha was the entrepreneur. He had prepared himself thoroughly while driving up to Stockholm, and Jan Kleyn did not interrupt him a single time with questions or requests for further explanations.

When Konovalenko was finished, there was silence.

He waited.

“We’ll send you a new entrepreneur,” said Jan Kleyn in the end. “The other one must be dismissed immediately, of course. We’ll be in touch as soon as we know more about who his successor will be.”

The conversation was over.

Konovalenko replaced the receiver and knew the call had turned out exactly as he hoped. Jan Kleyn interpreted events as a case of Konovalenko preventing a disastrous outcome of the planned assassination.

He could not resist sneaking up to the bedroom door and listening. It was silent, apart from the radio.

He sat down at the table and poured himself half a glass of vodka. Now he could afford to get drunk. Since he needed to be alone, he let the bedroom door stay closed.

He thought about escorting Tania to the room where he slept when in residence. All in good time.

Early the next morning, he rose carefully so as not to disturb Tania. Rykoff was already up, sitting in the kitchen over a cup of coffee. Konovalenko got a cup himself and sat down opposite him.

“Victor Mabasha has got to die,” he said. “Sooner or later he’ll come to Stockholm. I have a strong suspicion he’s already here. I cut off one of his fingers before he disappeared. That means he’ll have a bandage or a glove on his left hand. He’ll probably go to the clubs in town where Africans generally gather. He has no other alternative if he’s going to track me down. And so you can start spreading the word today that there’s a contract out on Victor Mabasha. A hundred thousand kronor to anybody who can eliminate him. Go and see all your contacts, all the Russian criminals you know. Don’t mention my name. Just say the person issuing the contract is OK.”

“That’s a lot of cash,” said Vladimir.

“You leave that to me,” said Konovalenko. “Just do as I say. There’s nothing to stop you earning the money, in fact. Nor me, come to that.”

Konovalenko would have nothing against putting a pistol to Victor Mabasha’s head himself. But he knew that was hardly likely. Such good fortune would be too much to hope for.

“Tonight we can tour the clubs,” he said. “By then the contract must have been issued so that everybody who ought to know about it has heard. I’d say you’ve plenty to do.”

Vladimir nodded and got to his feet. Despite his flabbiness, Konovalenko knew he was most effective when the chips were down.

Half an hour later Vladimir left the apartment. Konovalenko stood at the window watching him in the parking lot down below, getting into a Volvo that looked to Konovalenko like a more recent model than the one he’d had before.

He’s eating himself to death, thought Konovalenko. He gets his kicks from buying new cars. He’ll die without having experienced the great pleasure of exceeding his own limitations. There’s barely any difference between him and a cow chewing its cud.

Konovalenko also had an important job to do that day.

He had to raise a hundred thousand kronor. He knew it would have to be done by robbery. The only question was which bank to choose.

He went back to his bedroom and was momentarily tempted to creep back under the covers and wake Tania. But he resisted, and got dressed silently and quickly.

Shortly before ten he left the apartment in Hallunda.

There was a chill in the air, and it was raining.

He wondered for a moment where Victor Mabasha was.

At a quarter after two on Wednesday, April 29, Anatoli Konovalenko robbed the Commercial Bank in Akalla. The raid took two minutes. He raced out of the bank around the corner and jumped into his car for a quick getaway.

He figured he had gotten away with at least twice as much as he needed. If nothing else, he intended treating himself and Tania to a gourmet dinner once Victor Mabasha was out of the way.

The road he was on curved sharply to the right as he approached Ulvsundavagen. Suddenly he slammed his foot on the brakes. There were two police cars ahead of him, blocking the way. How had the police had time to set up a roadblock? It was only ten minutes at most since he left the bank and the alarm went off. And how could they have known he would choose this particular route?

Then he acted.

He slammed into reverse and heard the tires squealing. As he swung around he knocked over a trash can on the sidewalk and ripped the rear fender loose against a tree. Now there was no question of driving slowly anymore. All that mattered now was his escape.

He could hear the sirens behind him. He swore aloud to himself, and wondered one more time what could have happened. He also cursed the fact that he did not know his way around the district north of Sundbyberg. In fact, the escape routes he had to choose between would all have taken him onto a major highway leading to the city center. But he had no idea where he was, and could not figure out the best getaway.

He soon strayed into an industrial estate and found himself trapped on a one-way street. The police were still on his tail, even though he had stretched the distance between them by running two lights. He leaped out of the car, the plastic bag in one hand and his pistol in the other. When the first squad car screeched to a halt he took aim and shattered the windshield. He had no idea if he hit anybody, but now he had the advantage he needed. The cops would not chase him until they had called for reinforcements.

He scrambled rapidly over a fence and into an enclosure that could have been either a dump or a building site. But he was lucky. A car with a young couple had driven in from the other side. They were looking for some place off the beaten track where they could be alone. Konovalenko did not hesitate. He crept up on the car from behind and thrust the pistol through the window at the man’s head.

“Quiet and do exactly what I say,” he said in his broken Swedish. “Out of the car. Leave the keys.”

The couple seemed completely confused. Konovalenko had no time to waste. He ripped open the door, dragged out the driver, leapt in behind the wheel, and looked at the girl in the seat next to him.

“Now I drive,” he said. “You have exactly one second to decide if you come with me or no.”

She screamed and flung herself out of the car. Konovalenko drove off. Now he was no longer in a hurry. Sirens were approaching from all directions, but his pursuers had no way of knowing he had already gotten himself a new escape car.

Did I kill anybody? he thought. I’ll find out if I turn on the television tonight.

He left the car at the subway station in Duvbo and rode back to Hallunda. Neither Tania nor Vladimir were at home when he rang the doorbell. He let himself in with his own key, put the plastic bag on the dining table, and got out the vodka bottle. A few big gulps calmed him down. Everything had gone well. If he had wounded or even killed a policeman, that would naturally raise tensions throughout the city. But he could not see how that would put a stop to or even delay the liquidation of Victor Mabasha.

He checked the money; he had a total of 162,000 kronor.

At six o’clock he switched on the television to catch the early evening news. Only Tania was back home by then, in the kitchen preparing dinner.

The broadcast opened with the story Konovalenko was waiting for. To his astonishment, he found that the pistol shot intended to do no more than shatter the windshield had proven to be a master shot. The bullet hit one of the cops in the squad car right where his nose met his forehead, right between the eyes. He died instantly.

Then came a picture of the cop Konovalenko had killed: Klas Tengblad, twenty-six years old, married with two small kids.

The police had no clues beyond the fact that the killer had been alone, and was the same man who had robbed the Akalla branch of the Commercial Bank just a few minutes previously.

Konovalenko made a face and moved to switch off the television. Just then he noticed Tania in the doorway, watching him.

“The only good cop’s a dead one,” he said, punching the off button. “What’s for dinner? I’m hungry.”

Vladimir came home and sat down at the table just as Tania and Konovalenko were finishing their meal.

“A bank robbery,” said Vladimir. “And a dead cop. A solitary killer speaking broken Swedish. The town won’t exactly be clear of cops tonight.”

“These things happen,” said Konovalenko. “Have you finished spreading the word about the contract?”

“There’s not a single hood in the underworld who won’t know before midnight that there’s a hundred thousand kronor to be earned,” said Rykoff.

Tania gave him a plate with some food.

“Was it really necessary to shoot a cop, today of all days?” he asked.

“What makes you think it was me who shot him?” wondered Konovalenko.

Vladimir shrugged his shoulders.

“A masterly shot,” he said. “A bank raid to raise the money for the Victor Mabasha contract. Foreign accent. It sounds pretty much like you.”

“You’re wrong if you think the shot was a direct hit,” said Konovalenko. “It was pure luck. Or bad luck. Depends how you look at it. But to be on the safe side I think you’d better go in to town on your own tonight. Or take Tania with you.”

“There are a few clubs in the south of the city where Africans generally hang out,” said Vladimir. “I thought I’d start there.”

At eight-thirty Tania and Vladimir drove back to town. Konovalenko showered, then settled down to watch television. Every news broadcast had long items on the dead cop. But there were no hard clues to follow up.

Of course not, thought Konovalenko. I don’t leave a trail.

He had fallen asleep in his chair when the telephone rang. Just one signal. Then another ring, seven signals this time. When it rang for the third time Konovalenko lifted the receiver. He knew it was Vladimir, using the code they had agreed on. The noise in the background suggested he was at a disco.

“Can you hear me?” Vladimir yelled.

“I can hear you,” replied Konovalenko.

“I can hardly hear myself speak,” he went on. “But I’ve got news.”

“Has somebody seen Victor Mabasha here in Stockholm?” Konovalenko knew that must be why he was calling.

“Even better,” said Vladimir. “He’s in here right now.”

Konovalenko took a deep breath.

“Has he seen you?”

“No. But he’s on his guard.”

“Is anybody with him?”

“He’s on his own.”

Konovalenko thought for a moment. It was twenty past eleven. What was the best thing to do?

“Give me your address,” he said. “I’m on my way. Wait for me outside with a layout of the club. Especially where the emergency exits are.”

“Will do,” said Vladimir.

Konovalenko checked his pistol and slipped an extra magazine into his pocket. Then he went to his room and opened a plastic chest standing along one wall. He took out three tear gas canisters and two gas masks, which he put into the plastic carrier bag he had used earlier that afternoon for the money from the bank raid.

Finally he combed his hair carefully in front of the bathroom mirror. This was part of the ritual he always went through before setting out on an important assignment.

At a quarter to twelve he left the apartment in Hallunda and took a cab in to town. He asked to be taken to Ostermalmstorg. He got out there, hailed another cab, and headed for Soder to the south.

The disco was at number 45. Konovalenko directed the driver to number 60. He got out and started walking back slowly the way he had come.

Suddenly Vladimir stepped out of the shadows.

“He’s still there,” he said. “Tania has gone home.”

Konovalenko nodded slowly.

“Let’s go get him, then,” he said.

He asked Vladimir to describe the layout.

“Exactly where is he?” asked Konovalenko when he could picture it.

“At the bar,” said Vladimir.

Konovalenko nodded.

A few minutes later, they donned the gas masks and cocked their guns.

Vladimir flung open the entrance and hurled the two astonished doormen to one side.

Then Konovalenko tossed in the tear gas.