His own role in this sad story was not something he was proud of, despite the fact that he’d been able to turn it into an advantage for the operation instead of the catastrophe that would have otherwise been the alternative if Johansson had prevailed. Actually it also concerned far more important issues than one policeman who ought never to have been allowed to become one. Important matters that Berg was assigned to protect and in which the price, regardless of how the whole thing came out in the end, would always be too high. For all that, the only one who had acquitted himself creditably in the matter was Johansson, despite the fact that, measured by any objective legal standard, he had failed completely.
During the years that followed, Berg had been worried about how things would go for Johansson. Would he run around like a rabid dog telling his story to anyone who had, or didn’t have, the energy to listen? Would he, like so many before and after him—completely disregarding whether they were right or wrong—go to the media to get help?
Johansson had shown himself to be exactly what he seemed to be, a real policeman. He had never said a word. Just held his tongue and shook himself and continued as though nothing had happened. Instead he’d made a career within the same operation that had betrayed him. Certainly not a bad one, and the way he’d gone about it fit in well with the reputation that had always surrounded him. Say what you will about Lars Martin Johansson from Näsåker, and there were many of his colleagues who did, no one would even think that he was anything but “a real policeman.” There were plenty enough who’d arrived at a painful insight in that regard.
And Berg would never think so, for he himself was “a real policeman.” Or had been, in any case, before the bureaucracy that he was now appointed to lead had started to eat him up from inside. He had tried to do what he could for Johansson, and as far as such things could be done in secret. He’d tried to become his secret mentor, his “rabbi,” his “padre,” his “godfather,” as his foreign colleagues used to describe the situation. Why isn’t there any good word in Swedish for that, by the way? thought Berg. Because such things are un-Swedish, naturally, and in any case nothing you can talk about openly. Especially not in these times.
But with Waltin it was much simpler, for regardless of what he might be, in any case he was not “a real policeman.” Berg and Waltin also had a history in common. It went even further back than his one-sided secret contacts with Johansson. Most recently it had unfortunately developed less well, and by the day after his meeting with Persson, Berg decided that it was high time to change that. Despite the fact that it was almost Christmas.
“So, here we sit like two little birds on a branch,” said Waltin with a conciliatory smile while in passing he adjusted a crease in his new trousers of classic English tweed. And you’re only getting sadder and grayer, he thought, nodding toward his boss.
“There are a few things we need to talk about,” said Berg.
It certainly did not turn out to be a pleasant conversation. The subjects that Berg had chosen didn’t allow for that.
First he brought up the Krassner case. It was as though he couldn’t avoid the misery, despite the fact that Krassner had taken his own life. Despite the fact that their own covert house search was only an unfortunate coincidence. Despite the fact that they had done exactly what they were expected to do and what their employer actually had the right to demand of them. Which he actually had demanded of them, even if the special adviser hadn’t left any paperwork about the matter.
“What I’m trying to say,” said Berg, “is that we could have avoided a great deal of trouble if you had followed my advice and made an ordinary narcotics arrest. I’m not ruling out the possibility that he might have tried to take his own life as soon as he’d been let out of jail, but then this wouldn’t have ended up as close to our table as it does now.”
I don’t believe my ears, thought Waltin. He seems to have become as gaga as old man Forselius.
“With all respect I seem to have a different recollection,” said Waltin with a friendly smile. “I seem to recall that when I suggested that we should do it like that, you rejected the whole idea.” And I never found out why you did, he thought.
“Then I am afraid that our recollections diverge,” said Berg, digging out a paper from the pile on his desk. “I have a notation here that we discussed the matter the day before; it was Thursday, the twenty-first of November, at sixteen zero five hours in the afternoon and I was the one who called you.…”
This isn’t true, thought Waltin, but he didn’t say that. He was content to smile and nod, for if it was really going to be like this it was important to keep a good countenance.
“And according to my notes,” Berg continued, “you then told me that you had planned a narcotics arrest the following day. I’ve also noted that I approved that.”
“Sure, sure,” said Waltin. “But that was at the point when Forselius had not yet made contact, but then he did late in the evening and we went back to our original plan.”
Berg moved his shoulders regretfully.
“I have no notes about that,” he said. “Why didn’t you call and tell me about your change of plans?”
My change of plans? thought Waltin. This is not true, dammit, he thought.
“I seem to recall that you’d gone to the Germans,” said Waltin.
“That wasn’t until the following day,” said Berg. “And if so, wouldn’t it have been possible to call me there too? Or what?”
“Yes,” said Waltin, smiling despite the fact that it was starting to be an effort. “Somewhere there seems to have been a breakdown in communication.”
“Yes, unfortunately that does appear to be the case,” said Berg. “A completely different matter,” he added.
Then he discussed the department’s view of the external operation and that he himself would not be opposed to an inspection if one were to be requested. There was no one outside pulling on the door handle exactly, but sometime during the spring it would certainly come up.
“We’ll have to set aside a few days and go through all the papers,” said Berg. “Sometime at the start of the new year.”
“Fine with me,” said Waltin, getting up.
He’s not smiling anymore, thought Berg.
Wonder how it’s going for Persson, thought Berg, leaning back comfortably in his chair after he’d been left alone in his office. The only light in my firmament; wrong, he thought, for there was actually one more, faintly glistening in the distance like the Star of Hope. The hope that he would finally be rid of Kudo and Bülling.
The Stockholm chief constable and Kudo and Bülling had found one another. Given the police context it almost resembled a love story. Not because they slept with each other or even cuddled a little, for they were all fully reliable homophobes, and in that respect no shadow fell on any of them, despite the chief constable’s secret literary leanings, Kudo’s recurring observations of gnomes, and Bülling’s general peculiarities. What was involved instead was a very strong, almost transcendental spiritual communion of the type that can only arise when highly gifted people are united by a common interest even greater than themselves.
“The Kurds,” said the chief constable with ominous emphasis on both words. “Gentlemen,” he continued solemnly, nodding toward his two visitors. “We are talking about what is at the present time the most dangerous terrorist organization in the entire Western Hemisphere. So give me some good advice. What do we do?”
Finally, thought Kudo. Finally someone in the leadership who realizes the seriousness of the situation. Necessity trumps the law, thought Kudo, for he’d read that somewhere, and purely concretely it was the incomprehensible secrecy rules of the secret police that this very necessity had in mind. Then he and Bülling related everything to their new ally, but first they had naturally given him the necessary background.
The very first thing they had related was their secret language. About weddings and other events, about poets and about lambs who were to be butchered.
About cakes, pastries, and rolls and all their difficulties in working out what this actually meant.
“We will have a wedding, we will butcher a lamb, we will have two poets, cakes, pastries, and rolls.…” The Stockholm chief constable nodded with pleasure while he savored every word. … “Exactly like myself, you gentlemen have paid notice to the strongly ethnic character of the codes they’re using.”
“Exactly,” said Kudo. “Exactly.”
“Exactly,” said Bülling, nodding toward the chief constable’s newly polished floor.
“So it’s hardly by chance that they have chosen these particular codes for their operations here in the West,” stated the chief constable. “Tell me,” he said as he rubbed his hands with delight. “Tell me how you’ve solved this ethnically oriented problematic.”
It was Kudo then who told about their new informant. He was himself a Kurd. Political refugee like all Kurds, but in contrast to the rest of their informants he had applied of his own free will. He was a baker besides, and had a brother who was a butcher, and together they ran a little catering business whose customers were almost all Kurds too. For many years they’d been delivering their wares and services to countless Kurdish weddings, funerals, and parties.
In such a context that particular background was unbeatable, Bülling had thought as he made the preparatory analysis. Their new informant knew everything about what deliveries and other arrangements were part of a real wedding, a normal funeral, or an ordinary party. Apart from his special knowledge he could see directly if there was something strange when their surveillance objects were planning their activities, and as a result they were sitting in a tight spot, thought Bülling. Planning a political murder based on the orders for a real wedding was naturally impossible. The operation would be doomed to fail.
The fellow had another quality besides, and it was not so strange that it was his best friend and closest colleague, Kudo, who had discovered it, considering that he himself had received the same gift: Their new informant was also a seer. He could see contexts, connections, and occurrences that were hidden to normal people, and this regardless of whether they were already a fact or were still in the future. At first Bülling had resisted the very thought that it might be like that. Considering his informant’s other qualities, it was almost too good to be true, and Bülling’s critical bent and analytical mission made him generally skeptical of such possibilities. Therefore Kudo had proposed a scientific test, and it was Bülling himself who had set it up and carried it out. Down to the least detail and in order not to leave any imaginable explanation untested.
First he’d pulled out a number of cases that he and Kudo had succeeded in clearing up and of which their new informant could not have the least knowledge. Based on these cases he had then formulated twenty or so specific questions that had taken him and Kudo months to reach a solution to. Their new informant had only required a little less than an hour to answer all the questions, and all of his answers had been correct.
Before they’d told the chief constable about their new weapon in the struggle against Kurdish terrorism, they had discussed whether they should reveal to him that their new informant was also a seer, that he had the gift. It was unfortunately the case that many people resisted such possibilities for primitive, emotional reasons, and because their own worldview was then at risk of collapse. This had solved itself quite naturally and obviously. Toward the end of their lecture, Kudo had nodded toward their new ally, and when he saw the look in his eyes, those gentle, wise, boundary-crossing eyes, he had simply said it. Straight out.
“And besides, he has the gift,” said Kudo. “He can see things that others don’t see.”
The Stockholm chief constable only nodded at first. Mostly to himself, it seemed. Then he looked at them with great seriousness and great sincerity.
“They’re the best,” he said. “And the most difficult.”
Finally they told about their most recent and most urgent surveillance case. On the planned assassination of a “highly positioned but not more closely identified Swedish politician.”
“He has given us the name,” said Kudo.
“I’m listening,” said the chief constable.
“The prime minister,” said Kudo.
. . .
When Kudo and Bülling had left him, the chief constable decided that he must warn the prime minister. The prime minister was still his personal friend from long ago; he himself was the only police officer that the prime minister could trust. He had helped him before and at a time when he wasn’t even the prime minister. Most important of all: If the prime minister met with a political assassination, it was the chief constable’s personal responsibility to see to it that it was cleared up and that the perpetrator was brought to justice.
I must warn him in good time, thought the chief constable. Before something happens, he clarified to himself and in order to rule out any possibility of a mistake.
If Kudo and Bülling and the Stockholm chief constable had seen the light, it was all the darker in the world where Göransson and Martinsson were nowadays. First that mysterious work trip to Petrozavodsk in the middle of a biting-cold Russian winter, where they were both about to freeze their rear ends off. When they’d come home, a series of freezing-cold, meaningless surveillance assignments, one after another, which never seemed to end.
The news that they would be moving back to the open operation after the New Year had almost come as a relief. Naturally they hadn’t been told the reason that it had turned out that way, but in the squad there were rumors of yet another reorganization. The week before Christmas they were called in to the top boss’s own stable boy, Chief Inspector Persson, in turn—Göransson first because he’d been serving the longest—and as usual in these contexts he’d had the company of the bureau’s attorney. There they had to sign the usual papers, which promised secret legal proceedings, multiyear prison sentences, financial ruin, and personal disgrace if they uttered a word about their time with the closed operation. More terrifying than the documents they signed was Chief Inspector Persson himself, and before Martinsson left the room he gave him a parting word.
“You’ve had damn good luck, lad. If I’d been the one to decide we would’ve boiled you for glue.”
Whatever, and you can shove it up yours, you fat asshole, Martinsson thought, and that evening he went to the local bar and got royally drunk.
. . .
Obviously it had been the usual old dive down on Kungsgatan, and as it was right before Christmas there was no lack of police officers in the place. The line wound all the way down to Vasagatan—a few guys who were working in radio cars had been in such a hurry to get there that they still had their uniform trousers on—and when Martinsson finally got in there was so much going on that the floor, walls, and ceiling shook. But despite the fact that he got drunk as a lord, he couldn’t summon up the right mood. After a while he spotted young Oredsson, who was sitting with a couple of girls in a corner, and because they seemed unusually sober it was there that he sat down.
He’d met Oredsson last summer. They went to the same gym and had run into each other while exercising, lifting weights, and sitting in the sauna and male bonding, and one thing had led to the other and rather quickly it had become clear to each of them where the other stood. Because he himself was working quite a lot with the survey of the police at Norrmalm, he had also tipped off his chief about Oredsson. Here was a budding officer who shouldn’t have any difficulties making his way into the circles they were working with. There was nothing really wrong with Oredsson, thought Martinsson. There was nothing really wrong with his opinions either, for most of what he said was both right and reasonable and everyday police fare, for that matter. As an infiltrator he would have passed like a hand in a glove, but just before he was to give him the invitation, the boss had suddenly blown off the whole thing, and as usual he hadn’t been told a damn thing about why. And considering what he himself had met with it was no doubt the best thing
that could happen, thought Martinsson.
When he was standing in the john relieving the pressure, Oredsson came in and stood at the urinal beside him.
“How’s it going, Strummer?” said Oredsson, sounding worried. “You seem a little down.”
“It’s okay,” said Martinsson, shaking the artillery piece before lifting it into his trousers. With just one hand, thought Martinsson, for he always thought that.
“How’d it go, by the way, with that job you were talking about last summer?” said Oredsson. “You never got back to me.”
“It got fucked up,” said Martinsson. And you should probably thank God for that, he thought.
“Too bad,” said Oredsson. “That thing with SePo sounded exciting.”
“I’ve quit,” said Martinsson.
“Did something happen?” said Oredsson, taking him by the arm.
“Fucking fifth columnists,” said Martinsson, and then he pulled Oredsson into the john. Locked the door and told him everything about what Berg and the other bastards were doing.
Afterward it felt much better. Oredsson stood him a few beers and they made a toast in silent collusion. And that stable boy Persson could shove those fucking papers up his fat ass, thought Martinsson.
Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End: The Story of a Crime Page 43