The Swedish Sex Bomb (LSD, #7)

11. Born To Run

Born To Run

Yesterday, we had enough for one day. After leaving Maj Wahlöö in the professional hands of Liza (and after paying for the damage with my LSD credit card), we went home. 'Home' is Agneta's house to cook and eat, and after that, 'home' is the Kepler Clinic for Frieda and the hotel for me. My suggestion to drive to Malmö right away and spend the night in a hotel caused a panic attack in Frieda's system. For the last eight months, she's been a patient. She's doing great during the day, in the light, but at night, the darkness returns to her soul. She needs the safety of her room in the clinic. No problem. We get up early and go the next day.

According to Maj, the Angels chose their headquarters in Malmö for escape reasons: it's close to Denmark. Many people there have a boat. It's almost impossible to check on everyone.

We find the address easily. There's nothing but an empty parking space in front of the door; they don't seem to have a lot of visitors. Zlatangatan 9 is a concrete wall, four metres high, with one solid door in the middle. No bell. Just a camera eye in the centre of the door. On the post, there is a small square with black and white dots. It's a code, similar to a QR code, but it doesn't have the blocks in the two left corners and the upper right corner. With my spiPhone, I take a photo and send it to #2, The Nerd, Europe's Number One magician in the dark art of deciphering secret codes and scrambled messages. Which will take time.

To kill that time, I speak magic words to Frieda: "Let's have coffee. You said the south of Sweden is famous for its pastry. I want proof."

"Hunger, hunger, hunger, breakfast, lunch, dinner, coffee, tea. All you think about is food. You'll grow fat before you reach thirty."

"No, I won't. I'm like Swedish people: I burn all those calories with my daily activities. This morning, I started the day with an hour of squash, only losing 6 – 2 this time. Then I drove six hours in an antique Saab with only two short breaks for petrol and bathroom. My stomach tells me it's time for coffee. If I listen carefully, my stomach screams it's time for lunch, but we won't have time for lunch because my guts tell me The Nerd will have this riddle solved in a twinkle of an eye. If your sister Agneta is held captive here, we have no time to lose."

Wherever you go, in Sweden the coffee is always good, but this bakery, a little further in the street, with the promising name Pernilla's Pastry Pantry, has so many little treasures to go with it. I'm seriously thinking of aborting today's mission and try them all.

They are called Fika. I try a Lussekatt, a Mazarin with almond paste, a Semla, a Punchrulle, a Gräddbulle, a Vaniljhjärta that's filled with aromatic vanilla custard, a Kanelbulle, a Chokladbiskvi, a Hallongrotta and an Araksboll. My Swedish vocabulary gets an energy boost in this bakery. We don't have time to have lunch here, but if we handle this mission fast, we can come back and have tea.

The Nerd doesn't give me the time to finish even my small selection. His message consists of a text and an attached document: «The code is a common PDF417 2D barcode with 4 bars in a 17-module structure. It's used often, mainly in the USA, for postage, driver's licences, boarding passes and state ID cards. This one contains the link to a website that consists of one single page, with an instruction and a warning, both in Swedish. See attached for the translation in English. The door will open when you say the password, but there's no info about what that password might be».

I read the text from the attached file aloud to Frieda: "You can go in, but you can't get out. There are three doors, the doors of durin'. The first door will open when you speak the password. Behind it, you enter The Garden. We hid two paintball guns and six bullets there. You'll need them to survive The Patio, the playground behind the second door.