Gieger

by Gustaf Skördeman

‘Don’t you think we’d have thought of that?’ she said.

  Then she called Brundin at the Security Service again. A second victim from among the old informants – surely now they had to say what they had. But Brundin refused. She could neither confirm nor deny that they held any information pertaining to one Hans Schulze, and she had no other comment to make.

  Jürgen Stiller, the priest, did indeed live just outside Tranås in Småland, although it transpired that he was based in Östergötland county, since his church was in Ydre just across the county boundary. Anna got the Linköping police to dispatch a patrol car – sirens and all – to provide police protection until the murderer was found. Following Schulze, the threat against Stiller was being taken seriously.

  Then Anna and Sara waited for Forensics.

  ‘Stellan and this Schulze guy have both been fingered as spies for the DDR in Hedin’s book,’ said Sara, gesturing towards the corpse. What do you make of it? Do you think there’s something to the spy angle now?’

  Anna remained silent – which indicated that she thought Sara was right. While they waited for their colleagues to arrive and the usual procedures to get started, they looked around the flat.

  It was an odd home – located in an old tower. Plaster walls and wooden floors. There appeared to be three or four flats within the building, each with their own front door on different sides of the tower and rooms over several floors. The bedrooms and bathroom were upstairs, while the kitchen and living room were downstairs. In the bedroom was a single bed, neatly made. There was a clock radio on the bedside table. The kitchen was spacious, with a wooden dining table. Judging by the fridge and shelves, the inhabitant had been no gourmet chef. Blood pudding, porridge, potatoes and sausages.

  In the living room, the walls were completely covered in shelves with classical music CDs. The stereo was still on. Linn, Sara noted to herself. Martin was an audiophile, and she had even gone with him to the HiFi expo on a few occasions, so she knew her stuff. Linn was a connoisseur’s brand. Expensive. But nothing else in the flat was at all indulgent, so music and sound appeared to have been the deceased’s only vices. There was a lot of Deutsche Grammophon – all the major composers, and plenty that Sara had never heard of. In any case, what was in evidence was the same love of classical music that Stellan had had. There weren’t many of Sara’s generation who had the same interests.

  Schulze, the music lover, had been shot in the knee – in addition to the fatal headshot. The knee injury was different from the murder of Stellan. As if the murderer had tried to extort information from Schulze. Had he succeeded? Who wanted to see these old men dead so long after the fact? And why?

  Or was it not actually ‘after the fact’, Sara thought to herself. Were these executions the consequence of something that had been going on all along? Had the Cold War never really ended? Hadn’t Hedin said something about that?

  With both the Soviet Union and East Germany gone, who might be behind it?

  Sara turned to Anna.

  ‘Where does Agneta come into this?’

  ‘She might have seen something she shouldn’t have and been abducted?’

  ‘Like the murderer? But why take her with them? Why not just shoot her and dump the body – like they did with Stellan and Schulze?’

  ‘Maybe she knows something? Do you think she knew that Stellan was a spy?’

  ‘No. Not Agneta.’

  Anna’s mobile rang.

  ‘Yes? In Stora Skuggan. Another murder – victim had been identified as a Stasi spy . . . Thanks to Sara . . . She’s here with me now.’

  Anna listened for a minute, then she hung up and turned to Sara.

  ‘We need to get over to the campsite in Ängby.’

  23

  Despite the fact that no one had told them to hurry, Anna was doing one hundred and ten kilometres an hour down the long straight on Drottningholmsvägen. As they approached the campsite, they spotted the head of the preliminary investigation, Bielke, standing waiting for them outside the barrier across the road.

  Had they found another victim?

  Or had they located Agneta?

  They were hardly throwing a surprise party in Sara’s honour. So why did she have to be here?

  They got out of the car and followed Bielke past the red wooden cabins by the site entrance to a large motorhome surrounded by similar vehicles from a variety of countries. This one happened to have German registration plates, a tent porch and sun loungers, but the curtains were drawn. German Schlager music was audible inside.

  Bielke knocked on the door, and a burly man opened it with his hand behind his back. He was wearing what Sara was certain was a bulletproof vest under his tracksuit top. Inside the door there was a metal detector that beeped when the three of them stepped inside, and they were obliged to hand over their service weapons before the inner door, made from a huge chunk of metal, was opened.

  The inside of the motorhome was most definitely not a holiday home.

  Running along the sides were tables bolted to the wall, groaning with radio equipment, a plethora of displays and rows of computers. There were filing cabinets and what looked like a miniature laboratory. In the centre of the room, there was a boardroom table – perhaps it doubled up as a dining table, too. A bijou kitchen and a couple of sleeping berths were the only reminders of the vehicle’s original function. The outer walls were so thick that Sara had to assume they were substantially reinforced – possibly with armour-plating. A motorhome for war zones, Sara thought to herself. It wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Mad Max movie.

  Seated at the table in the centre were two women in their sixties and a man who was slightly younger. The latter was rotund and looked like he weighed at least 150 kilos. One of the women was white-haired and dressed all in white. The other had short grey hair, and was wearing jeans and a very badly fitting jacket. The white-haired one nodded at Sara to indicate she should sit down. The other scrutinised her in silence. Sara noticed that they didn’t seem at all interested in Anna.

  ‘Sara Nowak?’ said the white-haired woman.

  ‘That’s me,’ she replied in her overly diligent schoolgirl English, characterised by an almost over-the-top British accent.

  ‘I’m Doctor Breuer and this is Doctor Strauss,’ said the white-haired woman in heavily accented English. ‘We’re from the BND – the Bundesnachrichtendienst. This is Frau Brundin from your Säpo – the Security Service.’

  The word ‘Säpo’ sounded funny in German-accented English, Sara reflected before noting that Brundin looked more or less as she’d imagined.

  Sour and suspicious.

  A remnant of a more bureaucratic era at Säpo.

  ‘You knew the family?’ said Breuer.

  ‘Yes,’ said Sara.

  ‘Played with the daughters?’ She nodded in reply. ‘What were they like?’

  ‘Like all children. Sometimes kind, sometimes mean. But I think it was special for them, being part of Stellan Broman’s family. He was the most famous person in Sweden for many years.’

  ‘But you didn’t notice anything strange?’

  ‘Spies and mysterious strangers? No. There were always lots of new acquaintances in the house. Lots of guests and parties when he wasn’t working. Can I ask you something?’

  ‘No,’ said Brundin.

  ‘What?’ said Breuer.

  ‘Why are you here? Was he a spy?’

  To Sara’s surprise, the burly policeman in the tracksuit top began to lay out a picnic on the table in front of them. Sausages and cheese. But Strauss was the only one to help himself.

  ‘Your friend Anna told her boss you have a theory that the murder may be connected with the Cold War,’ said Breuer.

  ‘It’s a theory,’ said Sara, although to her eyes it was the only reasonable one – especially given this visit.

  ‘Where did you get that theory from?’

  ‘A book by Eva Hedin.’

  Brundin rolled her eyes in an exaggerated fa
shion that would have looked overdramatic even in a pantomime.

  ‘Hedin . . .’ said Brundin.

  ‘And what did she say?’ said Breuer, ignoring Brundin’s interjection.

  ‘Tell me what you know first,’ said Sara.

  ‘Secret,’ said Strauss, shoving a toothpick around his mouth.

  ‘OK,’ said Sara, deciding to keep quiet.

  For a long time.

  ‘Remember that you’re a police officer,’ said Breuer.

  Sara still stayed quiet.

  ‘Nowak, please answer the question,’ said Bielke. But that didn’t help either. Sara stayed quiet.

  Until Breuer gave up.

  ‘OK. I guess that your profession is in possession of the same information that we are,’ she said. ‘So I can tell you. Stellan Broman is listed in the Stasi archives as an IM – an informal collaborator. Code name Geiger. There are hundreds of old informants and spies all over the world who’ve never been brought to justice, but the vast majority are inactive. We thought Stellan Broman was inactive, too.’

  ‘Why were you watching him, then?’

  ‘We weren’t.’

  ‘You just happened to be passing right now?’

  ‘We were monitoring a phone number in another country,’ said Breuer.

  ‘A number that made an unexpected call to the Bromans,’ said Strauss.

  ‘We didn’t know he’d been shot when we arrived,’ said Breuer. ‘When we drove past the house, we saw the police tape.’

  ‘And who called Stellan?’

  ‘That’s not something we can go into,’ said Breuer. ‘But we’ve reason to believe that they’ve activated another old player from back in the day – a terrorist with many lives on his conscience. And we believe he may be on his way here right now. So we need to know more about Broman. We need to understand the connection between the people we’re monitoring and an old IM here in Sweden.’

  ‘And that’s why we need to know why he was shot,’ Strauss added. ‘And by whom.’

  There was silence inside the mobile command centre. Sara looked around. Did the Swedish Security Service have equipment this cutting-edge?

  Her gaze fell on a computer display with several open tabs. They appeared to include both Swedish and German newspapers, and all the articles were about an explosion in Germany the day before. Five Germans and two Swedes had died when a road was blown up. EXPLOSION A MYSTERY, SEVEN DEAD ON AUTOBAHN, GAS EXPLOSION OR BOMB? TERRORIST CONNECTIONS UNDER INVESTIGATION were just some of the headlines.

  ‘Is this to do with Stellan’s murder?’ said Sara, pointing at the screen with the articles and looking at Breuer, whom she perceived to be the leader.

  ‘Why would it be?’ asked the woman in white.

  ‘German–Swedish connection. Might be a terrorist act, and you just said that the terrorists you’ve got eyes on have started to move.’

  ‘No comment,’ said Strauss.

  ‘As we said, they’re here because of the call to Stellan,’ said Bielke. ‘But when we checked the Bromans’ call logs we didn’t find any incoming calls at all for yesterday, despite the daughter’s statement and our German friends. So we compared phone numbers.’

  ‘Count Bielke’s inspired idea,’ said Breuer generously.

  ‘And they had two lines,’ he continued. ‘One number that friends knew about, and a secret one that they’ve never been called on, going back as far as Telia can see. The phone in the study had a different number from the other phones in the house.’

  ‘What do Säpo say?’ said Sara. ‘I tried to find out whether they had a file on Stellan, but Brundin refused to answer. Maybe she was more impressed by you?’

  ‘Frau Brundin is highly knowledgeable with regards to the Cold War and counter-espionage in that era, and has been most helpful,’ said Breuer. ‘But it goes without saying that I cannot comment on what materials Säpo may or may not have.’

  ‘But thanks to our information, Säpo and the Swedish police will keep an eye on ports, railway stations and airports,’ said Strauss.

  ‘He’ll get in anyway,’ Breuer muttered.

  ‘You do know that another old spy has been shot, right?’ said Sara. ‘Kellner. Yesterday. He was part of the same ring – I think that’s what you’d call it?’

  ‘Bielke told us,’ Breuer confirmed with a nod.

  ‘Hedin says that the spy ring was led by someone called Ober,’ said Sara. ‘But she doesn’t have a name for him. Do you?’

  She looked from Breuer to Strauss and then to Brundin, examining their faces carefully to see whether she could make out anything in their expressions. A small tremble, a quick glance, a brief hesitation. It was almost like playing poker and looking for any signs in the gestures and expressions of your opponents. Sara had realised that information was hard currency in this world, and that it wasn’t to be shared unless absolutely necessary. This was completely contrary to how she usually worked with her colleagues.

  ‘No,’ said Breuer. ‘A lot of files were destroyed when the Wall came down.’

  ‘Do you know anything about Ober?’

  ‘We know that he recruited Geiger, and that they met in Geiger’s home to hand over information and for ideological education.’

  ‘His home?’

  ‘Regularly.’

  ‘So I may have seen Ober?’

  ‘Very possibly,’ said Breuer. ‘That was why we asked you to come here. To help us identify him.’

  ‘Do you know anything else? What kind of person are we talking about?’

  ‘He was radical. He handled contacts with certain Palestinian groups at that time. He helped European terrorists to access training camps with them. And we believe that he supported West German terrorists by providing them with accommodation and money here in Sweden. Your country was something of a refuge for the world’s extremists back in the seventies.’

  ‘We had them under surveillance,’ said Brundin.

  ‘Are these terrorists still active?’ said Sara, pointing at the articles on the display.

  There was a nod from Strauss.

  ‘We assume the call was a signal to Geiger to be prepared,’ he said. ‘But what were Geiger’s other instructions? Why was he shot?’

  Sara remembered the meeting with Lelle Rydell, but couldn’t imagine him as an East German spy. Which was possibly the perfect cover. Seemingly harmless and uninterested in politics . . .

  ‘Is Ober next on the list?’ said Sara. ‘Is this urgent?’

  ‘Maybe Ober is the one getting rid of everyone else,’ said Breuer.

  ‘If so, then the question is why,’ said Strauss, looking at Breuer as if he was hoping she would evaluate his contribution.

  Sara glanced at Bielke, who was sitting peering at the acerbic Brundin. He would probably have preferred the main line of inquiry to have been a different one. He was always so careful to avoid treading on the Security Service’s toes.

  ‘That phone number abroad,’ said Sara. ‘You mentioned Palestinian groups – you mean Black September and others like them?’

  ‘And others like the IRA and ETA. And the Red Army Faction. With a focus in the Middle East. And some of the people who were active back then have carried on freelancing for various clients. Today there are new players who have joined the old activists. You might say they have interests in common. Hatred of Israel, the USA and the West.’

  ‘Al-Qaida and Islamic State?’

  ‘Those kinds of organisations.’

  There was a knock on the door. Sara jumped and all the Germans’ eyes turned to a screen that was obviously connected to a CCTV camera.

  Standing outside the motorhome was a man in Adidas shorts with his torso bare, together with a boy of around twelve. The burly policeman drew his weapon and concealed it behind his back before going out of the security door and closing it, and then opening the outside door.

  ‘Do you want to play volleyball with us?’ said a voice with a strong Västgöta accent.

  ‘I
ch spreche kein Schwedisch,’ said the policeman.

  ‘Der Volleyball?’ said the man with the accent.

  ‘No. Sorry. Wife sick,’ said the policeman.

  ‘OK. Sorry. Gesundheit,’ said the eager sports fan.

  Then the door closed and the policeman returned inside.

  Sara turned towards Breuer.

  ‘I need to ask something. What exactly was Stellan spying on? What information was he able to provide to East Germany? He was just a television presenter.’

  ‘The DDR loved cultural personalities,’ the older woman replied. ‘They provided an air of credibility and could “lead the masses” in whichever direction the Stasi told them to. And men like Broman, who socialised with the upper crust of society, were in a position to make those people more positively disposed towards the DDR and to gather information about high-ranking Swedes and their weak points. Politics, sexuality, substance abuse, and so on.’

  ‘Let me read a couple of lines to you,’ said Strauss, pulling out a folder from the filing cabinet. When he’d found the right page, he translated the contents into English. ‘Assessment of IM Geiger: “G is completely faithful to our cause, a devoted sympathiser, bordering on fanatical. Does not hesitate to carry out drastic action in the name of peace and socialism.”’

  ‘That wasn’t my impression of Stellan. To Swedes, he was a playful uncle and I mostly viewed him as a workaholic.’

  ‘When a spy is uncovered, his nearest and dearest are always just as surprised as everyone else,’ said Strauss.

  ‘The wife is missing.’ Breuer turned to Anna.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No trace?’

  Anna shook her head.

  ‘And what does your source say about that?’ said Breuer to Sara. ‘The professor?’

  ‘Nothing. She only cares about Stasi spies.’

  Breuer looked at Sara for a long time.

  ‘What?’ said Sara. ‘Was Agneta a Stasi spy, too?’

  ‘No, we don’t think so.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘It’s a little unclear.’

  ‘Is she dead?’

  ‘Or she’s fled the country. When everything began to heat up again.’

  ‘There was one thing you didn’t answer.’