The questions were never answered with any certainty. As the years went by, the doubts only grew.
Twelve years later, the Estonian government sends an intelligence agent to Helsinki to look into the matter. His name is Karl Pokk – in Finland, Karl Pokka.
In Finland, 1930 is a year of political turmoil. Karl is caught up in events he had not been prepared for. He becomes a double agent for Estonia and Finland, a smuggler of pirtu, and finally an agent who infiltrates the kidnap squads of the far-right Lapua Movement.
Karl makes friends, true and false. He learns that no one can be trusted completely. Death, too, comes close.
At the same time, his private life slides into crisis. Casual affairs threaten to destroy his marriage. Karl tries to get his family life back on track, only to find that solving the problems of love is no easier than espionage.
IA historical enigma
In March 1918, Estonia has fallen under German occupation. Jüri Vilms, Deputy Prime Minister of Estonia's first independent government, sets out with three companions to flee across the ice of the Gulf of Finland towards Finland. His task is to continue the work for Estonian independence abroad and to prepare the founding of a government in exile.
The four men vanish without a trace.
Could the Gulf of Finland have swallowed all four strapping men? The possibility is not considered credible. Rumours circulate about their fate, but nothing certain comes to light.
Later, the Estonian government receives a report stating that two eyewitnesses saw Vilms and his three companions executed in Helsinki on 13 April 1918, in broad daylight and close to the city centre.
The timing fits the events. The Germans have just taken Helsinki, and they would have had reason to get rid of Vilms, who had worked for Estonian independence.
The report's account becomes the long-accepted explanation in Estonia for the men's fate.
But twelve years later, the reliability of the report's author has been seriously called into question.
That is why Karl Pokka is sent to Helsinki in 1930. He must find evidence that either confirms or refutes the account of the executions.
Karl examines the alleged execution site and the victims' grave. He tracks down eyewitnesses and others who might know something about the missing Estonians.
His investigations bring surprises. Information comes to light that even Karl himself finds hard to believe.
IIWho tells the story?
The events of the novel reach the reader through Aili Järvinen. She is Karl Pokka's granddaughter, who has found her grandfather's old notes and documents.
Aili sets out to discover what her grandfather really did in Finland in 1930 and what he learnt about the fate of Vilms.
In her research she uses present-day methods and finds information that Karl had no way of obtaining in his time.
And so two eras meet in the novel: the politically turbulent Finland of 1930, and the present day, in which old documents can be reopened with entirely different tools.
But will the new information solve an enigma that is almost a century old?
IIIHow the novel came about
In the early 1990s, as a follow-up to my short story collection, I began a novel about the kidnapping of Finland's first President, K. J. Ståhlberg, in October 1930.
I wrote some forty pages. I described the car journey of the President and his wife from the kidnappers' point of view.
Then I stopped. I realised that what I had in my hands was not a novel. Not really a short story either. Something essential was missing from the story.
The work was left unfinished.
At the same time, something new came into my life: information technology. It carried me off for decades. Writing was left in the shadow of other work. Leaving something unfinished always rankles.
I did not return to the historical novel until the 2020s. I had come across the enigmatic fate of Jüri Vilms. At around the same time ChatGPT was released, and I began to experiment with what artificial intelligence might offer a writer.
This time information technology had quite the opposite effect to the one it had had in the 1990s. Rather than drawing me away from literature, it helped me return to it.
Writing a historical novel became fascinating. AI speeds up the search for information and the handling of source material, helps to check details and acts as a proofreader. It can also point out a writer's own pitfalls.
But the story is still the writer's responsibility. Historical facts cannot be left to AI's guesswork. Even in invented events, they must not contradict history. Even the story of Karl and Linda's marriage is based on genuine surviving correspondence. Karl searched for the truth; I am a seeker of truth myself.
Two books were also major sources of inspiration.
I read Jaan Kross's novel Kuningasajatus. Kross treats Jüri Vilms and the Estonian independence fighters beautifully and romantically. He also weaves into the narrative the story of the Italian airship engineer Umberto Nobile's 1928 polar expedition.
Kross's novel led me to historian Seppo Zetterberg's study Jüri Vilmsin kuolema (The Death of Jüri Vilms).
These two works made me see my old, unfinished kidnapping story in a new light.
The Finland of 1930 and Estonia's struggle for independence in 1918 began to intertwine in my mind. The President's kidnapping was no longer an isolated event, but part of a wider story of power, violence, loyalty and betrayal.
And above all, of an unsolved enigma.
What really happened to Jüri Vilms and his three companions? Had their fate been settled, or had the officially accepted account covered up something else?
The fate of the Estonian freedom fighters could not be left shrouded in darkness.
I had no choice but to write the graves open.