AH Vignette: Alex and Jan
Two men in their late 20s sat on a bench and looked at a glorious sunset over the sea. The day had been sunny but already bit chilly, to be expected in October in these latitudes. The younger man's eyes followed a passing seagull. The warm buzz from two gin and tonics animated him when he turned to the man next to him.
”Everything's gonna be fine, brother”, Alex said to the man in a Svea Line officer's uniform.
What he received in return was a mixture of a smile and a scowl. Jan was on duty, so he had to stay sober, for the while at least.
”You keep saying that, Alex.”
Three young Swedish women passed the two men right then, all ready to go to the lower deck and back inside. Alex could see that their clothing was a bit too light for the weather out here on the upper deck. He didn't mind. Even after he had travelled between Finland and Sweden for several years now, he still was convinced that there was a certain innate stylishness to Swedes, something the Finns might not ever manage to reach. Much of it was history, sure, and much of it was to do with the huge gap in living standards between the two countries – still, eight years after Finland regained its freedom after many decades of Moscow telling it what to do. But, in Alex's opinion, even discounting these things, there was a certain amount of class, a certain gracefulness in Swedish women especially that Finns just could not match.
...
A white passenger ferry makes its way across a shimmering sea in the sun. It is large and boxy, in that unmistakable early 90s style. We get an aerial view of the ship passing us, the great crowned blue ”S” on the funnel featured in the middle of the frame.
The view shifts to the ship's bridge, where a man in a captain's uniform greets us with a slight smile and a nod. The crowned ”S” cap badge is prominent. He has a short-cropped salt and pepper beard, and he exudes quiet competence.
Next the camera pans through the tax free shops, lingering a moment on smiling female staff members in their neat blue uniforms with yellow scarves. Next is the buffet, sumptuous tables of various dishes presided over by a smiling man in white clothes and a chef's hat.
Then, suddenly, we are in the ship's disco. In soft, pulsating lights, a crowd of young people is dancing. There's more women in scant clothing than there are men, and from the style of the clothing one gets the idea that the women are specifically Finnish or Estonian. By the bar, a young blonde man in a smart suit and a blue tie is enjoying a drink with a girl in a miniskirt and a revealing top. Soon, the man and the girl leave the bar together, the man smiling suggestively to the camera as the couple passes it.
Again, a view of the ship from the air. The camera pans out to reveal that it is just a part of a small fleet of three similar ships going to the same direction side by side, only differing slightly in detail.
Voiceover: ”This season, we are proud to introduce three new ships on our routes across the Baltic Sea. They represent the pinnacle in comfort, fun and services the Baltic has ever seen. The Svea Regina, the Baltia Regina and the Fennia Regina run daily from Stockholm to Helsingfors, Tallinn and Åbo. Svea Line welcomes you aboard!”
The screen is filled with the familiar blue S decorated with a yellow crown. The iconic jingle plays in the background.
Caption: ”Ride the Queens of the Baltic – with Svea Line!”
...
The look in Jan's eyes is one of concern.
”I suggest you take it easy with the sauce for a few hours, Alex”, he says and glances at his watch.
”I need to go now, catch you later.”
For Alex, Jan has been like an older brother for as long as he remembers it, even though the two are not in actual fact related at all. But they are friends from the same neighbourhood since young age – playing together among the buildings in central Helsinki, members in the Young Pioneers, and when not in uniform, racing with their bikes and drawing anti-Communist slogans on the walls when they were sure the guardians of the block were not watching. Their fathers came from different backgrounds – his father was an underground dissident, a member of the Pond, Jan's father was a bureaucrat for the System. It all made young Jan a rebel – he had told Alex several times how he despised what his dad did.
I hope your dad was my dad as well, he had told Alex one day after school. He had had another of his rows with his father the night before.
The thing was that Jan's father wasn't really ideological at all. He showed that after '87, becoming a full supporter of the new government. His main goal was to keep his son in line to keep him out of trouble. But Jan had been too bull-headed to see that.
Alex was woken from his thoughts with the familiar Svea Line jingle in the loudspeakers.
”Attention all passengers! The M/S Fennia Regina is approaching the Åland Exclusion Zone in ten minutes. Everyone out on deck is required to return inside for the next three hours. Thank you for your attention!”, said the announcement in Swedish, Finnish and English.
Oh well, Alex thought and slowly stood up. It was getting dark anyway, only the last rays of the sun still visible on the horizon.
In truth, below his easygoing gin-fuelled exterior, there was a nagging, bubbling worry that at times bordered on panic. His thoughts again drifted to the secret-filled truck containers in the car deck, his reason for this outing. For Alex to make any headway in advancing to a better position in the Pond, he needed this trip to go out without a hitch.
Alex's father, Göran, was a living embodiment of the Spirit of '52. Not of the ”hide in the woods and kill Soviets in guerrilla attacks”- kind, but rather of the ”hide in plain sight and do even worse damage” - type. Back in the day, Finland expected to have Olympic games and a farewell to the uncertainty of the postwar years. What it got was a Communist coup and a Red Army occupation. Göran Stubb was among the young men that, by and by, gave birth to the Pond like it later became known, the foremost underground resistance organization along the coastal areas. The smart resistance organization.
The Pond is small, but it goes very deep, like the popular saying went.
Then, after the Communist system fell, Göran used his many contacts and resources to make himself a wealthy man. In the late 80s privatisations, he scooped up three truck companies and no less than a simple majority of stock in Rail Fennia. The man became a transport magnate, a member of the Finnish business elite in this brave new era. An oligarch, like some called them. Always interested in sports, now he was even eying a hockey team for himself. The Helsinki Red Stars had fallen on hard times since it lost its position as the People's Army's own club, and Alex had no doubt that before the year was out his father would announce that the team had now been joined to his business empire – as was right and proper, the old man would say.
Göran was among the people pushing Finland west. To the European Union, to NATO. But there were powerful forces working against that as well. The Russian-backed parties like the Democratic Centre, for one thing. And now since three years ago the bloody debacle with the Åland Islands. Now, until it was resolved, Finland would not be joining any major Western organisations – which was undoubtably how Moscow had calculated it as well.
Alex had a wrought relationship with Göran. He sensed that the old man wanted him to carry his mantle, to run the family business after him. Maybe even become a political leader. But still nothing he did ever seemed good enough for his father. So, Alex had decided that he needed to make a name for himself in the Pond, on his own terms. If that would not convince the man, probably nothing would.
The success of this trip would go far in that regard, Alex thought. Or rather hoped. Of course he was not the only Pond operative aboard – there were more than him and Jan, certainly, but they were deliberately unknown to him. Compartmentalisation, his father would call it. Independent cells. That's how you ran a proper clandestine operation.
Alex's feet took him inside the ship, and then, as if by magic, towards the pub on deck seven– the ”Dublin Public House”. It was all done in plastic mock-wood panelling (due to the most recent maritime safety regulations, no doubt) and in the corner was a man with a guitar, right now doing a so-and-so rendition of an old Quarrymen hit in Estonian-accented English.
Alex ordered the beer on tap, a typical Finnish lager out of the now-private former state brewing combine in Lahti. Most Finns still enjoyed the Communist-era drinks and foods now and then. Old habits die hard. The beer still even retained its old logo, displayed on the tall glass – a golden lion holding a hammer and a sickle, with a broken chain between its legs.
Kansan Leijona – The Working Man's Beer.
The beer cans with the golden lion on them were well-known in Sweden as well - the Swedish ship passengers brought it over from their trips in such quantities that it made both the Systembolaget and the government nervous. But what can you do - in Finland beer cost a fraction of what it did in Sweden.
The young man sat down by an empty table in the quickly filling bar and took a swig from the cold glass.
As soon as he raised his eyes, he could see a beautiful woman approaching the table.
…
Jan scanned the horizon with his binoculars and then turned his attention towards the radar again.
”Everything as it should be, Vapaavuori?”, the captain asked him in his deep baritone.
”Pretty much as it should be”, his second mate answered, ”there's no traffic to speak of. The Empress Maria has just left harbour and those are her lights there on our starboard side, right on schedule. There are a couple of Russian warships around the port, but they are stationary. Some smaller vessels, but they are not really our concern.”
”Good, good. And you have contacted... Mariehamn... with our information?”
The captain had only just arrived to the bridge.
”Yessir. Everything went by the book, though for some reason they asked us to slow down to below 15 knots for as long as we are passing the exclusion zone.”
Despite his background in the People's Navy where he had had to long cooperate with the Soviets on a nearly daily basis, Captain Mäkelä could not bring himself to call the main city of the Ålands by its new name, ”Mariagrad”, demanded by its Russian-speaking majority population. Or maybe it was exactly because of that history of his. Jan was sure there was not a single pro-Russian bone in the man's body now, after the events of the last few years, even if there had once been.
”That's... unusual”, Mäkelä conceded, ”but it should not mess with our schedule, so that's what we'll do.”
With his binoculars, Jan could see the Empress Maria approaching in its Russian flag livery. The M/S Amalia of the Erikson Line, built by Götaverken in 1975, had been set on the Turku-Mariehamn-Stockholm line as soon as the shipping company relocated its headquarters back to the islands in '87. But then it fell afoul of the Ålands takeover and changed its name and flag as well. Now it ferried Russian tourists from St. Petersburg to Mariagrad and back. The descendants of Gustaf Erikson had brought legal action against the Russian state in Swedish and international courts, but like with other such cases to do with the former Ålands Lease Area, there was no resolution in sight.
Small beads of sweat dotted Jan's forehead, but he was too concentrated on his work to notice it. The next few hours would be the most crucial of the Fennia Regina's journey this time around.
He again reached for his binoculars.
…
”Maybe you should get us new drinks?”, the blonde had asked Alex. Now he was bringing back a beer and a white wine to the table where the woman was sitting alone for the while. As he set the glasses down, she favoured him with a smile.
”Thank you. Who ever said there are no gentlemen in the world anymore?”
The girl said her name was Elena. To listen to her, she was an Estonian bound for Stockholm to see her brother, a man who had some years ago emigrated to affluent Sweden to make his fortune. She had told Alex that he reminded her of her brother, and that is why she had decided to approach him, sitting alone in his table.
You look trustworthy, she had said.
She was not exactly Alex's type, but she wasn't hard to look at, either. Straw-coloured long hair, a freckled face. The petite, trained body of an acrobat, Alex thought. Her accent sounded more Russian than Estonian. He had first considered that she was a ship's cat, like they called the Baltic- and Finnish-born prostitutes plying their trade on the Svea Line ships, under the keen eye of their Pond handlers-cum-pimps while the shipping company leadership studiously averted its gaze. But no, Elena appeared way too smart and grounded for that profession. And besides, she had not made any such proposals to him a ship's cat would do.
She appeared to be genuinely interested in the young Finland-Swede, which was a heady realization to the already slightly drunken, nervous Alex.
The young man again went through how he would find his SÄPO contact at Stockholm harbour and what he would say to the man or woman representing Swedish intelligence. He could not help to think of all the rather extralegally acquired Russian military material down in the car deck, on customs-cleared trucks and in containers marked ”farming supplies”, bound for Sweden to be pored over by Swedish experts as well as Stockholm's friends from the United States of America no doubt. The Pond had a long and successful relationship with the Swedish authorities and with Western intelligence, too. It would be long before anyone in power would publicly admit to this, of course.
As far as the Swedish press was concerned, the Pond wasn now seen as much actual organised crime as the Russian mafia was.”The Pond” again?, was customary for the Aftonbladet to ask whenever an obvious mob hit was uncovered in the Swedish capital. Earlier, the Swedish public opinion had generally seen the organisation in a positive light. But in the last decade, with the disappearance of the Soviet menace, the views had soured significantly.
Outside the ship, darkness had already fallen. Alex looked out of the windows to see another car ferry pass the Fennia Regina, going the other way, all lit-up and red-blue-white. It was smaller than the bulky, boxy Svea Line ship, its classic lines betraying 70s design.
Alex turned to say something about it to Elena when suddenly a large, bearded man crashed down in the chair next to him.
”This seat taken, friend?”, the jolly man in his 60s asked him in a booming voice and Finnish-accented Swedish. In his hand he held a beer glass with the golden lion on it and only by sheer miracle managed to not spill any of its liquid contents.
Well now it is, apparently, Alex thought, feeling irritated. The bar was already full now and the man on the stage had shifted to classic American rock, bringing out off-beat versions of songs by Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley.
Well mama, she done told me, papa done told me too
"Son, that gal you're foolin' with
She ain't no good for you"
The large man was accompanied by a small, rather shrewd-looking fellow with greying hair. He had already enjoyed a number of drinks as well. He winked and sat down.
”I do apologise for Arvo here. I know you young people might like your privacy, but there's a marked shortage of seats in the establishment right now. Maybe we can make up for our intrusion by offering you something to drink?”
Now almost oblivious to the existence of Alex and Elena, the large man turned to his friend.
”Jorma, have I told you about the time I helped the Swedish to build their first atomic bomb, up in Gällivare?”
The smaller man nodded.
”Several times, Arvo, more times than I wish to remember. I don't know if our friends here are interested in it...”
The bearded man now looked at his friend conspiratorially and made as to lower his voice. It had a very limited effect on its volyme.
”I haven't told you all about it, though. Never. Its almost forty years now and the Soviets are gone, so fuck it... There's something I haven't told you...”
The smaller man nodded, with a long-suffering look on his face.
”My brother, the Cold War hero”, he said, looking at Alex with the hint of a smile in the corners of his eyes. Only now Alex realised certain common features in the two men, obscured by their size difference.
”...the thing, the thing about the Swedish atomic bomb was that a lot of the plans were stolen from the Russians!”, the bearded man said, now looking at Alex and Elena triumphantly.
”The Swedish will not admit it, but I have no horse in the race anymore. It was the Finns, they stole the plans from the Russians, and the... the Swedish bomb was based on them! Not many know this, but I was there – I was part of...”
The man now had Alex's attention entirely. Trying to get his point across, he spread his hands over the table. In doing so, he suddenly knocked over Elena's drink, spilling its contents on her dress.
The large man froze and a horrified expression spread on his face.
”Oh, I am so sorry. Me and my big hands! I'll make it up to you, I promise!”
Elena looked down on her dress, and then back at the men. She stood up.
”I need to go change my clothes. Alex, it was nice to meet you. Maybe we'll see later?”, she said, smiling to him despite it all before turning and leaving.
Suddenly feeling sorry for himself, Alex watched Elena sway away, fitting her steps with the rocking of the ship.
The big man looked at Alex.
”And now I scared away your date! I am so sorry, I'll get you a new drink right now to try to make up for it...”
Alex tried to look at the man, but somehow his features had just assumed a fuzzy, hazy quality in his eyes.
Am I this drunk already?
Alex tried to speak, but his mouth could not form anything approaching real human words in Swedish or Finnish.
”Atorgskhe hardtsta”, Alex told the large man earnestly. And then everything suddenly went black for the young operative of the Pond.
….
Jan had left the bridge for a while, to go out to the deck for a smoke to steady his nerves. Being outside was frowned upon this close to the Exclusion Zone, but then Jan was the ship's officer and it was close to midnight already. The sea was a bit more choppy now and it had started raining slightly.
Jan took a drag from his cigarette, facing towards the bow of the ship, when all of a sudden a strange noise caught his attention. He looked at the green bow deck and the white-painted steel on both sides and saw nothing.
Nothing out of the ordinary.
Until an explosion suddenly rocked the Fennia Regina and, to his horror, the ship's second mate saw the bow visor jump in its place, with fire shooting out from both sides of it, and then fall towards the water.
Due to some strange sort of instinct, Jan wandered some meters towards the port side and saw the second thing that night he could not understand.
A line of black rope ran down from the deck towards the sea. When Jan peered over the side, he noticed a figure in black clothes was going down the rope. What Jan saw in the dim light was a girl's face, framed with strands of straw-coloured hair peeking from under a black woolen cap. The girl looked apologetically at Jan and slid down the last few meters. Just like that she was down on the black-coloured RIB boat waiting for her next to the Fennia Regina's hull. And then the boat took off towards the Ålands.
In just about twenty seconds the ship had already started to list. Jan woke up like from a dream and looked around him on the doomed vessel.
”Perkeleen vittu!”, he shouted as the rain picked up and he started taking running steps to get back inside the bridge.
...
Alex woke up to someone shaking him and shouting. He opened his eyes to see Jan in front of him, with a furious look on his face.
”Goddammit Alex, you just had to go to drink yourself senseless, didn't you? Fuck you, brother!”, he said, grabbing his childhood friend up from the bar table.
The ”Dublin Public House” was now empty of patrons. There was only some scattered clothes and things around. Broken glasses and bottles littered the floor.
”You don't know how long it took me to find your sorry ass. The ship is sinking!”
Right. There was definitely something amiss with the bar, too, Alex thought. It took a moment for him to realise that it was tilting heavily to the left, and when Jan started dragging him out he was actually walking uphill. Only now he heard the emergency sirens bleeting all around the ship.
”The's ship's lost. We're lost”, the man in the Svea Line uniform told his disoriented friend who had finally found his sea legs again. Jan had already lost his cap, and his uniform shirt was torn in places.
”The Russians fucking knew. They knew and they attacked. The Pond will have our heads for this”, he said as the climbed a flight of stairs to get to the upper deck.
The main lights in the corridors started failing then.
”...If we survive, of course.”
When Jan and Alex got to the closest muster station, Alex saw that most of the lifeboats and life rafts had already been launched. A small fleet of boats was gathering in the rain outside the hull of the sinking Fennia Regina, heading away from it. Alex heard a sound in the air, to see a large helicopter with the insignia of the Russian Coast Guard approaching the ship, sweeping its decks with a searchlight.
”The Russians are first to respond. Fucking fancy that”, Jan said, holding out an orange life vest for Alex.
When the men had donned their vests, Jan told Alex that there were no lifeboats left. They would have to jump and pray to get picked up by someone.
As they found a place Jan considered the best for leaving the ship, he looked at Alex and the furious look on his face melted away.
Looking earnestly at Alex, he held out his hand.
”Good luck, brother. For all good it'll do to you.”
The men shook hands, Alex wishing Jan well, too.
As Jan went first, Alex looked down at the black Baltic Sea water, closing all the time.
I fucked up, he thought. He could see his father in his mind's eye, shaking his head.
I am done.
But I won't give up, no way in hell will I give up, the son of Göran Stubb thought as he finally found his courage and jumped.
…
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