The Assignment

by Per Wahlöö

  “You must see that the one is as unthinkable as the other. The whole assignment would be jeopardized …”

  “I know. I suggested them only so that you would understand that these possibilities are at hand and that they offer the only chance of saving your life. But then you’re choosing to stay and that means you’re living in a town where there are twenty thousand people prepared to kill you, as one would kill a prairie wolf or a rat. And it’s impossible to protect you, Ortega. I’m telling you this as a professional man. I’ve got seven hundred men in the province and not even with all of them collected here would I dare to guarantee your life. A political murder is the most inexorable thing there is—because the murderer doesn’t expect to save himself. He expects only to kill and to die. Even if you had a fortress and an army at your disposal, you still wouldn’t be safe.”

  He fell silent, but Manuel could still hear him breathing.

  “Do you know if your secretary makes a habit of listening in to your calls?”

  “Yes, she does.”

  “Excellent. Get your shorthand notebook out then, my girl.”

  He said this without a trace of humor or irony. Then he paused again.

  “Don’t forget a single syllable of what I’m going to say. Never leave the building. Don’t go into other parts of the building either. Never let your bodyguard out of sight under any circumstances whatsoever. Never open any communications or parcels yourself. Never stand by the windows. Always have your bodyguard investigate your bedroom before you go into it yourself. Don’t ever receive visitors except those you really know. Never go about unarmed, not even when you go to the bathroom. Don’t put your gun under the mattress or the pillow. Put it on a chair on the right side of the bed at waist height. Make sure the gun is always loaded and the safety catch off. Check that the gun is always in a place where you can get at it in a fraction of a second. Never eat food other than that which I send in to you. Don’t take sleeping tablets or any other drug which reduces the speed of your reactions.”

  He fell silent and seemed to be thinking. Then he said: “Ortega, I’m not telling you this in order to frighten you. You really must remember all this, and you must also keep a cool head. Under no circumstances must you lose control. Your position is to look at the positive side of it, from several points of view. I’ll see to the outer guard and I’ll keep four patrols—that is, sixteen men—day and night in or in the vicinity of the palace. They should already be there by this time. One man will always be at the door leading to your corridor. That’s the only entrance and his instructions are absolutely rigid. That can be good to know, especially at night.”

  Manuel did not reply, and after a few seconds Behounek shot his last bolt.

  “I am very concerned for your life … but this time they really mean it. And I understand them.”

  Manuel Ortega sat at his desk. The telephone receiver trembled in his hand. Several seconds went by before he could break the paralysis and replace the receiver.

  Danica looked at him seriously from the doorway. He drew in a deep breath, shrugged his shoulders, and turned to the immobile López.

  “Are you aware that the situation has become more serious?”

  “Yes.”

  Manuel discovered that he was still holding Sixto’s letter in his hand. He opened it and read: “Prospects improved. Ellerman will be at Hotel Universal at about four today. Arrange police protection for him. Sixto. Acting Chief Politburo. Liberation Front. P.S., You can trust Ellerman. Show this message to your secretary.”

  The message was hand-written and the writing was large and firm and legible.

  He went to Danica and gave her the letter. She nodded but otherwise made no comment.

  “This could mean considerable progress,” said Manuel Ortega.

  “Yes, it’s a step forward. Your conference will come off.”

  “Our conference, I’d say. Old Sixto has evidently made contact with the party leaders.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Why should he have changed his attitude then?”

  “Don’t you really see why?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes, of course.”

  “Viva Ortega,” she said, smiling a very small smile.

  “But what I definitely don’t understand is my own inability to understand such a simple connection.”

  “It’s hot and you’re still tired and a little frightened,” she said.

  “Is there any special hidden meaning in his P.S., do you think?”

  “There’s always a special meaning in everything Sixto does, says, or writes. In this case he means that I shall say: Yes, you really can rely on Ellerman.”

  “Do you know him?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Sixto you evidently know very well. How did you get to know him?”

  “Don’t ask me now. I don’t want to answer and I don’t want to lie to you.”

  Against his will he was angry, and she noticed it at once.

  “I’m hopeless,” she said resignedly. “Everything goes wrong. With people I really like I’m always babbling. I talk too much. Now I’ve got this all unrecognizably tangled up. You already know too much.”

  “You like me then?”

  “Yes. Truly, I think.”

  “O.K. We’ll talk about it another time. We’ll get Ellerman here as soon as he shows up at the hotel, shall we?”

  “Yes. Don’t forget to phone Behounek and warn him.”

  “Right. You’re not a bad secretary either.”

  He walked over toward the window.

  “Manuel! Not the window! Remember the instructions.”

  “Of course,” he said in confusion, and turned toward his own room.

  “Manuel,” she said again. “You’ve got to be careful now. Very careful. For several reasons.”

  At that moment he was thinking about something completely different. They were to talk about Sixto another time. Would there be another time?

  When he thought like that the sweat broke out all over his body, and now it was different, cold and sticky, and he shivered as if he had been walking in the rain down Karlavägen in Stockholm. But perhaps it really was so, perhaps there would be no other time. Perhaps he had only a few hours left to recover all he had neglected to do during the long stretch of careless uneventful years. His wife, his children, his brothers and sisters, his career. And everything else: all the unplayed games of tennis, the boat he never bought, the unread books, the women he had wanted and probably could have had but never did. Manuel, all the soft parts of the body, all the warmth, all the unheard music, all the neglected communion services, all the unspoken truths. No, it must not be like that. He sat down and called Behounek.

  “Yes, we’ll handle him like a soft-boiled egg. Who did you say—Ellerman?”

  “Wolfgang Ellerman. Do you know who he is?”

  “For once—no. But call in an hour and we’ll see.”

  “Despite everything, you are a human being! Good-by.”

  “One more thing, Ortega. Don’t forget Captain Behounek’s twelve points. For you they are considerably more practical than General Larrinaga’s seventeen.”

  Manuel relapsed into inactivity and immediately fear began to grind within him. Like a churning ache, round and round and round.

  There was only one way out: work and more work. And to take the bull by the horns. He stretched out his hand to call up Dalgren, but the telephone beat him to it.

  “Yes. Ortega.”

  “Oh yes, you filthy, lousy pervert of swine. Do you know what we usually do to Indian-lovers here? First, we cut their cocks off and then …”

  The caller was a woman. He broke off the call and said to Danica: “Must you put that kind of lunatic through? Get through to Dalgren instead.”

  “Oh yes, you’re still alive then?” said Dalgren coldly. “That almost surprises me.”

  “I’m calling to talk about the peace conference, not to discuss personal antagonisms.”

&nbs
p; “This, young man, is not a question of personal differences of opinion. You’re a traitor and to get rid of you is—how shall I put it now?—a matter of national interest. Moreover, I’m none too anxious to talk to you at all. As the conference is going to take place all the same without your personal assistance, I prefer to leave the business to one of your colleagues.”

  “Of course, that’s fine. One moment and you can talk to Señora Rodríguez. I wish you a pleasant evening.”

  He succeeded in saying the last words in a lighthearted tone of raillery despite the fact that he was furious, and despite the fact that the churning in his diaphragm was becoming more painful every second.

  Three minutes later Danica was standing by his desk.

  “They agree about Mercadal as a meeting place,” she said, “and they demand that the following shall be there: Dr. Irigo, El Campesino, Carmen Sánchez, and alternatively José Redondo or …”

  “Or?”

  “… Sixto Boreas. That’s wrong. His name isn’t that at all.”

  “What is his name then?”

  “Also they’re willing to send the delegates whom the Liberation Front nominated, that is, Count Carlos Ponti, Don Emilio Dalgren, Don José Suárez, and Colonel Joaquín Orbal. They make one reservation in that Colonel Orbal is away at the moment and they’ve been unable to contact him.”

  “Did you hear what I said? What’s Sixto’s name?”

  “Manuel, don’t force me to lie.”

  “Were you married to him?”

  For some reason he said this very violently.

  “To Sixto? Married? Good God, no!”

  Manuel suddenly remembered that they were not alone. He glanced quickly at López, but he was sitting as still as usual and his face was completely expressionless.

  The day was extremely hot. A white day which became whiter and whiter, hotter and hotter, which hour after hour was stretched out like a steel spring, more and more and more, toward a sudden explosion, as unforeseen as a catastrophe.

  As if at a great distance, Manuel Ortega heard his secretary occasionally answering the telephone.

  He moved like a sleepwalker into the bedroom and returned, frightened out of his life, with López behind him, his hand on the walnut butt and his heart thumping.

  At six o’clock Ellerman came; small, thick-set, curved nose, white linen hat and narrow-striped light-colored suit. He seemed efficient and energetic, sharp, practical, and discerning. Altogether it took half an hour.

  “The fundamental difficulty is naturally the time factor,” said Ellerman. “One or more of our delegates are not in the country. They must be reached, and certain preparations are necessary too. Let me see, today is Friday the fifteenth of June.”

  He counted on his fingers.

  “Saturday, Sunday, Monday—Wednesday then, at the very earliest Tuesday. The very, very earliest. Preferably Wednesday.”

  “We’ll try for Tuesday.”

  “But that’s really terribly short notice, almost absurdly so. All the preparation on the administrative level, the internal discussions. But we’ll try …”

  “Let’s say we’ll open the conference on the evening of Tuesday the nineteenth at, say, seven o’clock. Then we can carry on for as many days as we like. I’m sorry I have to force you, Señor Ellerman, but the situation is extremely tense. At the breaking point.”

  Breaking point, thought Manuel Ortega.

  “Yes. I must make a few contacts. You’ll have definite confirmation early tomorrow morning at eight o’clock. And the other details are fixed. Written guarantees from the government in my hand on Sunday. At the latest Monday morning. A six-mile demilitarized zone. Complete truce from midnight tonight on, no arrests, no armed action, nothing. It is unfortunately easier for the right-wing extremists to reach their … militia, than for us to reach our fighting forces. At the end of the conference, forty-eight hours’ grace. And then our delegates: El Campesino and José Redondo—well, why partisan officers at a conference table? But we’ll get hold of them, and Carmen Sánchez too, of course. The main problem is Dr. Irigo. But we’ll fix that. Otherwise we’ll have to postpone the whole thing a day. But you arrange all the practical details here; quarters, printing, broadcasts, and that sort of thing. All right? Excellent. Good-by.”

  Ellerman rose and picked up his briefcase. He stood looking out of the window.

  “Awful lot of policemen,” he said. “Very unpleasant. And a lot of demonstrators. Are the right-wing extremists going to kill you too?”

  “Yes,” said Manuel Ortega.

  “Violence,” said Ellerman. “I loathe violence of all kinds. And this struggle has to be carried on in this way.”

  He fell silent and poked at his nose with his little finger.

  “Oh well, various people on our side take a different view of violence. There are different sets of values. If only the legal situation weren’t so depressingly obscure. You know, the Communist Party isn’t banned in the Federal Republic, but it was disbanded by the previous government, which was rather military. So the Party is, so to speak, neither permitted nor forbidden. And the Liberation Front is not officially a Communist organization. This is a matter which must be settled by the highest courts. The government can’t decide just like that that the Liberation Front is a Communist movement—and the President knows it. Such a procedure has no legal relevance at all. When Radamek took over, he submitted both matters to the federal courts with the recommendation that the Liberation Front should be declared to be Communist but that the Communist Party should at the same time be made legal. Since then the federal courts have made no move and the matter still stands way down on their list of cases. Here they’ve got around the whole business by declaring a state of emergency and applying martial law. The only thing I know about martial law after seven years’ work is that the generals do exactly as they please. In other words, it’s not easy to be afflicted with a socialist view of life in this country.”

  He stood silently for a moment, rubbing his nose. Danica, behind him, leaned against the doorpost, smiling.

  “You know, our party has always been suppressed and has never been particularly strong in any of the other federal states. So the best forces were concentrated here in the south where there was a possibility of making some progress. Now many of them are dead—fine, strong people, real idealists. Only the top layer of the elite is left. The rest are stuck forever in this poor, frightful country. This miserable little feudal province with its millionaires and its military dictatorship. For a hundred years different politicians and different parties have scratched the feudal bosses’ backs to obtain backing for their election campaigns. For a hundred years career-mad generals have used this impoverished waste of stone as a springboard to the road to the presidency. And here the people have just starved and suffered and worked themselves to death. How otherwise could anyone earn millions from this desert of stones? And …”

  “Wolfgang,” said Danica Rodríguez.

  He started and turned around.

  “Aah—I beg your pardon. Talking too much again. Getting pathetic and long-winded, forgetting myself. Lucky I’m not going to be sitting at the conference table—what a lot of prattle—what a bad habit—well, good evening—and eight o’clock tomorrow morning …”

  He backed out of the room with his briefcase in one hand and his hat in the other.

  “He was a criminal lawyer to start with,” said Danica, “but he talked every minor case to death. It would take three days to settle an ordinary fight, and then of course he had his political handicap. Now he devotes himself to land cases oddly enough, and to the Party … He can be extremely efficient if he puts his mind to it.”

  “I liked him.”

  From outside came shouts, the roar of voices, and whistles. Somewhere a windowpane was shattered, briskly tinkling. She looked out.

  “Small fry,” she said. “Mostly women and children. The police are driving them off. They’re carrying placards and streamers.”r />
  “What does it say on the placards?”

  “Death to the traitor. What did you expect?”

  Manuel Ortega lay on his back in the dark with his eyes open and his right hand on the butt of his revolver. He heard Fernández moving about in the room outside. It was half past three and he had been lying like that for four hours.

  He had an exhausting day’s work behind him, a long and successful day. The conference was as good as settled. People he had never seen wrote “Viva Ortega” on the walls. The truce had come into force. For everyone, but not for him.

  He was afraid of the dark but dared not put on the light for fear of what he might suddenly see. He was on the alert for every noise. Had Fernández gone? No, another rustling; he was still there. But could he rely on Fernández? Or López? Or on Gómez? On Behounek? On Danica. On anyone? The answer: No.

  “Everything’s wrong, Manuel,” he whispered. “Everything’s been wrong from the very beginning. You’re an official and not a hero, however much you’d like to be one. You’re no Behounek. Nor a Sixto. Now you must show them that this being normal can mean strength, not necessarily weakness. But you must inure yourself to it. You’re being ground between two millstone ideologies and you’re surrounded by experts in the art of killing. But are they also expert at dying? Does Behounek lie awake in his official bed too? Or Sixto in his cellar room? Or López at the hotel?”

  After Sixto, he thought about the brown-haired Ramón and about the bruise and he was jealous. It came like a balm, but soon left him.

  No one was right. Neither Dalgren nor Ellerman. Nor Behounek either. Certainly not Behounek. Nor Orestes de Larrinaga. Nor Ellerman. Not Ellerman.

  Point 11. Because of the people’s low level of education, it is too early … But hadn’t every person a right to his own country irrespective of level of education? Should a small number of intruders be allowed to deprive everyone else of all their rights? On the other hand, could people born in this country be called intruders? They had, after all, grown up here, built towns and roads, created sources of energy and earning capacity …