The Golden Thread by Ravi Somaiya

The Golden Thread by Ravi Somaiya

Author:Ravi Somaiya [SOMAIYA, RAVI]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2020-07-07T00:00:00+00:00


Chapter 19

“Position L”

The Swedish foreign ministry is a rectangular box of a building with large windows framed by ornate pillars. Its grand, arched entrance, surrounded by flagpoles, overlooks a cobbled Stockholm plaza and a statue of the legendary Swedish king Gustav II Adolf.

In 1962, a few months after the Rhodesian report had been released, Bo Virving waited anxiously inside, under the cold gloom of double-height ceilings. He heard steps on the stone floor, and a polite functionary led him from the lobby, through a maze of paneled corridors, up narrow wooden stairs, and into an elaborately decorated office built on the scale of a small cathedral.

He placed a sheaf of papers on the table, sat down, and began to present an argument he felt sure would move the Swedish government to bring its resources to bear in the case of Hammarskjöld’s murder.

Virving had grown obsessed with finding a theory to explain the blank spot at the heart of the Rhodesian report: the silent minutes before the Albertina crashed. And after endless hours of work, his living room covered in maps, marker pens, and sheets of acetate, he had come upon one.

His task had been made easier by the fact that the top-secret underlying evidence the Rhodesian report had been based on—reams of typewritten paper, maps, and confidential intelligence reports—was held in two places. One copy was locked up safely in Salisbury, the capital of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. The other was spilling out of an increasingly tired and sagging white cardboard box, which had originally contained fifteen packages of instant macaroni and cheese, in Virving’s house in Sweden.

He had begun to gather it in Ndola. Sifting it all was a problem that he came to see as partly very human and partly mathematical. A puzzle that had to reconcile each known factor: the perspective of each witness, the bursts of radio communication the Albertina had shared with air traffic controllers, the statements of Harold Julien, and the technical capabilities of both the DC-6 and any other planes that might have been in the sky that night.

He told the Swedish officials that his work had begun outside of the courthouse in January 1962, when he had spoken with one of the key witnesses, Simango. “Undoubtedly he had seen two aircraft,” Virving said. And Simango had added a new and crucial detail. “Amongst other things he said that the flash he saw was moving fast like a fire arrow pointing slightly downwards and almost immediately thereafter came the crash.”

That flash had pushed Virving to concentrate on one theory out of the possibilities, he explained: that a mercenary plane had attacked or attempted to divert the Albertina before it landed.

Hammarskjöld’s plane had departed Leopoldville at 1751 Ndola time. The Rhodesians had presumed that because it filed a fake flight plan, none of its enemies could possibly have known where it was going, and when it might arrive—crucial information for any attack. (Even a bomb planted in the hold would require timing for a midair explosion.



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