Watcher in the Shadows

It's hard to pinpoint when it began— it's like an awareness that has grown over the years. Every now and then, I feel someone's eyes on me. Occasionally, it has been accompanied by something positive, but more often than not, it has carried a negative weight. Like that time my wife and I were on vacation in Sharm el Sheikh a few years ago. Our hotel room was located at the lowest level, with a small patio instead of a balcony. One morning, we noticed an Egyptian military police officer pacing back and forth outside our window. He patrolled relentlessly for over an hour, never resting. He would walk fifteen meters in one direction, then turn, pass by our patio, gaze through our window, and walk fifteen meters the other way. It was a relentless cycle.

I can't recall if my wife went out to ask the soldier what was going on, only to receive no answer (that would be just like her). But later, when we were heading to the beach, she inquired at the reception desk. They informed us that President Mubarak was visiting. I thought the hotel staff was joking, as it seemed highly improbable that Mubarak would visit our budget hotel. Yet later in the day, we saw a convoy of police cars and luxury vehicles with flags passing right where we stood, lined up outside a 'tourist liquor store.' Indeed, Mubarak was visiting, but not our hotel and this single soldier stationed just outside our window must have had something to do with Mubarak's visit. Apart from the soldier and the convoy, we noticed no heightened security anywhere, and the soldier seemed openly interested in our hotel room as if it was part of his duty. We never understood why we garnered this interest, but we shrugged it off as "shit happens."

Or in Calabria, a winter of a few years ago... We parked our camper van on a dead-end street along the sea. A local police officer told us we couldn't park there, despite it being designated as a camper van parking spot. However, he pointed us to a grassy area across the road where we could stay as long as we wanted. We had noticed a few German camper vans there, but some Germans do as they please in Italy, and we usually kept a certain distance for safety's sake. Reluctantly, we obeyed the local authority. Later, we found out that the Germans used to come to that spot every year. Even the Dutch, northern Italians, and others would join in.

But from day one, we felt unwelcome. Men in cars started gathering around our vehicle, their stares intense as they formed groups and engaged in loud discussions in an incomprehensible dialect. It became uncomfortable, but we endured. After a while, an Italian camper van parked close to ours. Then another one parked just as near on the other side. For a short time, we were good neighbors. Then one of them, later revealed to be part of an "old 'Ndrangheta family," grew increasingly intrusive and eventually offensive. When he encountered my wife on her way to the water fountain, he made inappropriate gestures, suggesting he would assault her. The man in the other camper van followed the same line, and their wives were no better, shouting derogatory words at my wife whenever they crossed paths.

For me, this meant war. I called the mafia man's wife a derogatory name. And that meant war to him. He retrieved a club from his camper van while chanting about the club's exceptional bone-crushing abilities. I walked toward him and stood outside his camper van, thinking that after he struck a blow, I would grab the club, pull him toward me, and attempt a judo move I had seen in a book. But my wife disrupted that plan by running between us and yelling. He didn't land a solid hit on me because he had to bend around my wife as he swung. I hesitated to execute my plan, as involving my wife would be risky. Moreover, his wife came running and took the club from him. The strike barely affected me, even though it left a bruise several decimeters long just below my kidneys on my back—a mark I later showed to some police officers who were passing by, stopped by my wife.

That was mistake number two. In Calabria, you simply don't call the police; you resolve problems differently, with firearms if necessary. From that point on, an increasing number of characters began appearing, making obscene gestures. They resembled figures plucked from a mafia movie, and we should be grateful they allowed us to live.

They say it's not ones fault if two people argue, but for us, it was clear that a group had wanted us gone from day one. While they displayed no interest in other tourists, they targeted us. Despite previously getting along well with the people of Calabria — a friendly and hospitable folk—we were too wary after what happened on the camper van parking lot to return.

The following winter, we settled in Basilicata, just north of Calabria, in a pine forest near Taranto. At the end of a forest road, near a small clearing and our own private seaside, even a drinking water fountain, we spent a peaceful winter. Occasionally, groups from Taranto came for picnics and volleyball, but mostly, we were on our own.

The next winter, we sought out this paradise again...

Twenty-five years earlier, I had discovered something I believed was a code related to the murder of Olof Palme, outside an organisation in Stockholm seemed to be a strong enemy of Palme:

CHARON - CHANTAL - VENERDI

By then, I had already decoded "death" and "Friday", but one word, "chantal," had no clear meaning. Now, armed with mobile internet, I began googling "chantal" on rainy days, but found absolutely nothing.

Suddenly, I spotted the pattern in Swedish '**antal' (antal=number). Could it be related to numbers? Assigning a=1, b=2, etc, I calculated that chantal equaled 59. I recalled that Palme had died at 59, which Wikipedia confirmed. Ch-antal! 'Ch' sounds like 'see age' in English! But another word in the code, 'charon,' also contained 'ch,' and indeed, the same calculation gave charon=59. I shared this on various debate forums and sent an email to the Prime Minister's Office, as an undersecretary who had behaved strangely around the murder had some connection to the code. My thought was that all incoming mail at government departments must be registered.

Two days later, as I was walking the dogs, a large black car approached the place where our camper van stood. My wife was alone inside, cooking, and I checked the license plate number just in case. It consisted of two letters, three numbers, and two letters. To my relief, the car turned around immediately and drove away. As it passed me and the dogs on the return trip, I noticed the license plates differed slightly in the front and back. The man in the car was neatly dressed, in a shirt and vest, and appeared to be in his seventies or slightly younger.

When we were eating, I told my wife about the oddly registered car. She thought I must have seen it wrong, as there was no logical reason for such a setup. It increased the risk of detection if you were up to something shady. Yes! It must be designed to be noticed by some inquisitive idiot with Asperger's syndrome. I began counting letters as a=1, etc., and realized that the first two numbers of my social security number were in the letters on the front plate, and the first two numbers of my wife's were on the back plate. My initial thought was that the man might be some sort of police officer or perhaps a military figure from Taranto, where NATO has a major naval base. Who else, except maybe the mafia, could find us so quickly? But communicate in this manner..?

The day after, I read that the state secretary was going to resign. I felt that this was concerning and convinced my wife that we should immediately leave our paradise and slowly, slowly start driving towards Sweden along back roads. Okay, I stuck my neck out there, and maybe it wasn't so strange if someone noticed me for that, but it's a bit odd that someone found us so quickly - and in the way they eventualy communicated.

From the time in Calabria, it has become a habit to be slightly attentive to what is everyday normal and what is not. A week or so ago, there was a man on a park bench in Stockholm who was staring intensely at me from a distance. We were out walking the dogs, and I thought he was afraid of dogs. As I got closer, I pulled the dogs away from the park bench as far as possible and looked at him to see his reaction. He had been staring the whole time and continued to stare without reacting to either me or the dogs. He was provoking in a sophisticated way, and his gaze was steady but inscrutable and accusing. My wife had also noticed something about the man because she asked him if he was afraid of the dogs. The man gave my wife a warm smile and replied, "I don't understand Swedish, ma'am." Then he continued to look at me, and every time I turned around, he was still there, staring without interruption.

The other day, when I passed a subway station in one of Stockholm's suburbs, I felt a strong discomfort and looked up to see a man walking directly toward me. He stared at me in the eyes the whole time. His appearance was distinctive: in his 40s, very well-dressed with a briefcase, square face with glasses, tall and broad with a very athletic body under the suit. There was something unusual, definitely, and he passed close by without looking back even once afterward. Following him was a young woman who looked at me spitefully. I thought that perhaps it was noticeable that I got scared of the man who had just passed by.

The next day, when I was about to get on a bus, a young woman was standing at the bus stop, looking contemptuously at me. There was something special about her expression. Another young woman stood right in front of me in line and was talking to the bus driver. When she turned her face slightly, I was taken aback, because she had the exact same expression or whatever it was, as the woman outside the bus. After a few seconds, she got off the bus again. Just to be safe, I got off the bus one stop earlier than might have been expected.

Sure, it's paranoia, but why would I lie to myself? When I know that I don't react to anything other than clear albeit sometimes hard-to-describe deviations? I don't even suffer from my paranoia; I regard it rather absentmindedly, like a radar screen on which I don't expect to see any echoes.

Then I read that the Secret Service considered Sweden a high-risk country due to two political assassinations. As president Barack Obama was about to visit Stockholm. I laughed, given that there were clear signs that the CIA had a hand in at least the murder of Olof Palme. Then, suddenly, I had a flashback: Mobarak... Barack Obama! Could it be?

When my younger sister worked as a church caretaker, Lisbet Palme was scheduled to speak at the church. This was after the murder, while Mrs. Palme was working for the United Nations. Before her arrival, the audience gathered, and a man started talking to my sister. He sat down next to her on a bench, and they continued talking. He was pleasant, and she had no issue chatting with him. But after a while, she began to wonder. As she went to carry out her caretaker duties, he found reasons to follow her. When the event ended, and the church emptied, he introduced himself and explained he was from the Security Police (Säpo). My sister had been deemed a security risk. He just smiled and shook his head.

Our father had been an active communist during the war. His name, I guess, had wound up in one registry after another, in one country after another. And maybe his children's names too? Perhaps the exceptional individuals I had encountered in recent days were related to Obama's upcoming visit? I promise you, it wasn't easy to arrive at this hypothesis. But with the help of a similarity in two people's names and an experience from the past, I found myself with this laughable hypothesis. Silly information in silly registers perhaps interpreted by silly Asperger individuals, not unlike myself. The idea that I could or would harm the President of the United States is incomprehensibly detached from reality. Yet with this hypothesis, everything fell into place: I encounter the CIA while walking the dogs, and I'm tested by the Secret Service while strolling in the suburban square. And the disdainful young women might have come from the "Secret Bureau", which at the time of Palme's murder possessed copies of Säpo's records on left-wing sympathizers and had a location with shady codes on a name board that seemed to announce pre-information about the murder of Olof Palme (Chantal - Charon - Venerdi).

We're the owners of two overly protective medium-sized problem dogs, a female and a male. They never let other dogs get close to them, and if a loose dog comes up to them, it turns into a brawl. So when we encounter other dogs, we step aside and try to calm our dogs. Especially the female becomes hysterically jealous. When ealking the dogs, almost all park paths were blocked by pitbull-like dogs, with people standing around, talking to them. But luckily, there was always an unblocked way, where I could walk with our dogs without risking a dogfight. Suddenly, I saw a faint, almost ball-shaped cloud in front of me. I couldn't smell anything, and I didn't see anyone smoking or grilling. The aerosol-like cloud rose just before I reached it, and I held my breath until I was about twenty meters past it. A little girl was cycling toward me, and her mother followed. Here is where the line between "paranoia" and "overly concerned" is crossed. If I had said something to the mother or the girl about the potential danger of the cloud, I would have been considered paranoid. This line is crossed when you care enough about your fellow human beings' well-being and start acting differently. Instead, I continued walking while holding my breath.

I reached a staircase and a man stood above, looking down at the place where the cloud had formed and dissipated. He blocked almost the entire path, and I tried to communicate with him by saying the dogs weren't dangerous. And then I added, "At least not to humans." The man looked at me thoughtfully and asked who they were dangerous to. While I kept walking, I answered, "To cats, rabbits, rats, foxes..." He followed me and asked, "Foxes? Aren't they usually quite aggressive?" I didn't stop, but turned around and replied in a friendly tone, "Not when two crazy dogs come running toward them!" He continued following me on the other side of the street and looked quite disappointed. He reminded me of a company doctor who had just discovered signs of illness in a patient suspected of being work-shy. Yes! His attitude was definitely that of a doctor who was patronizingly friendly!

When I got home, I sat down to write a continuation of this story, about how one can misjudge and create an increasingly unhealthy view of the world. And how others, for example, in secret services where open discussion is likely not encouraged, could also develop crazy scenarios. But inspiration wouldn't come, and I felt tired and increasingly stiff in the neck. I took a painkiller and lay down on the couch to rest. As I felt worse and didn't rule out a connection to the "cloud," I checked my blood pressure. Normally, it's under 120, but now, I measured it at 143. I relaxed for a few minutes and measured it again. It had risen further, to 157. My wife asked if I felt bad, and I said I might be getting a cold and planned to go to bed. I said a prayer and lay down to sleep.

When I woke up in the morning, I felt a bit hungover and had a slight cough, but otherwise, everything was okay. I sat down and finished writing the text you're currently reading, and now I regret not also saying a prayer for the girl on the bike and her mother."