All they wanted was to live in peace and work towards a better world together. But the USA and the capitalists couldn’t let them do that. They couldn’t allow an alternative to the buying frenzy and materialism in the West. The people weren’t allowed to see that another path was possible, because then they might not accept the status quo of market-driven slavery.
‘Dad,’ Lotta said, almost pleading.
‘Yes,’ said Stellan. That was all.
His commitment went no further than that – his willingness to fight for a better world. For peace.
Being celebrated and awarded medals was fine. But actually making an effort was something that didn’t interest him. It wasn’t by chance that Ober had picked her instead, and let her take over the work to secure material to blackmail those in power and strategically placed civil servants. He’d seen her dedication and resilience. He had honed her, drilled her and trained her.
Her father hadn’t had the focus and conviction required for battle. But the decadent, Western pleasures he’d engaged in had at any rate made it possible for Lotta to exploit his friends and acquaintances for her own ends. For something much greater.
Lotta had noticed that if Stellan got to meet a few girls from school, then it came in useful for her later on. And that had allowed her to perform better than even Ober had. She’d managed to gather compromising materials on a vast swathe of Sweden’s officialdom, had managed to secure political and business decisions that benefitted the DDR and socialism in all manner of matters. Just like Stellan boasted that he’d got the Swedish parliament to acknowledge East Germany as a sovereign state. But that was the only thing he had achieved.
And now? What were they supposed to do with all this material now?
She needed to contact Abu Rasil and see whether she could be of assistance. The Palestinians’ struggle was continuing, even if they’d lost an important ally in the DDR. The concept of socialism wasn’t dead. She hadn’t given up.
One beautiful day, the bell would toll for imperialism.
55
It had been Lotta all along.
Since when?
Her teens? Eleven or twelve? No, it was impossible.
Her father had laid the foundations through his work for the DDR. Flattered, deceived, vain man. Then Lotta had stepped in with her tough personality, drilled by Ober, while the monstrous Stellan was allowed to carry on with his attacks because it provided them with holds over the right people. Because he was providing his home and his contacts.
Because he was Lotta’s father? Did Lotta care about that kind of thing?
Once again. Just a young girl. A girl who’d sold her country down the river, who’d sacrificed girls her own age. She had rejected others’ choices. She had betrayed everything for an abstract concept.
A child.
How had the East Germans agreed to that?
Had Ober simply lied to them about whom he’d recruited? Had he bragged and just pretended it was Stellan? Or didn’t it matter, so long as Geiger was alive?
Sara remembered Hanne Dlugosch, whose mother had tried to leave the DDR but had instead been imprisoned and had died. Was it Lotta who had reported mother and daughter to the East German authorities? After Stellan had mentioned their situation at home? Perhaps Stellan really had meant to help them, but Lotta had got there first?
How many other people’s lives had she ruined?
Everything was cast in a new light.
Hadn’t Malin said that it was Agneta who’d picked up the phone? If Lotta was Geiger, then naturally the people calling were expecting a woman to answer. Hence the operation continued.
It was no surprise that the rolls of film had different levels of wear and tear. They’d been kept in different places. Quite simply because the rolls of film from the garden shed were Stellan’s, while the ones from the guest room were Geiger’s. Lotta’s.
She’d filmed everything in the guest room, filmed the powerful men exploiting young girls. Stellan had only filmed himself with the girls.
Lotta was the secret spy. Stellan was the useful idiot.
Instead of reporting her father for the rapes, she had helped him. She would invite girls that she could use once Stellan had broken them.
A toxic duo.
Lotta must have left her films together with Stellan’s to strengthen suspicions against her father and establish that he was Geiger. To protect herself.
If Agneta had killed Ober, was she the one who’d killed Kellner and Stellan, too? And why Stellan, if he wasn’t Geiger?
Sara had waited until Martin left. She’d told him she was tired and wanted to sleep. Then she waited another ten minutes, dressed and made her escape.
She caught a cab outside the main entrance to the hospital and gave Lotta’s address. She was still fuzzy from the painkillers and the attack, but firmly resolved to confront her childhood friend and hold her accountable.
When they reached Eastmansvägen, the taxi pulled over and Sara passed the driver her credit card. While the charge went through, she saw Lotta come out of the main door of her building and head in the opposite direction, towards her car.
Where was she going?
She asked the driver to put the meter back on and follow Lotta’s car at a distance. She really ought to have called Anna, and she ought to have called Martin to tell him she’d left the hospital. But they would only have tried to stop her.
A left turn onto Dalagatan and then along Sankt Eriksgatan to Fridhemsplan, then Drottningholmsvägen towards Bromma. When they reached the Tranebergsbron, Sara began to guess where they were going. She had the feeling something was happening. That it was all drawing to a close.
Was Lotta going to meet Abu Rasil?
Sara called Breuer – despite the ban on her being involved in the investigation. Despite the fact that she was suspended.
‘Stellan wasn’t Geiger,’ said Sara as soon as Breuer picked up. ‘It was Lotta. His daughter. She’s on her way to Bromma. I think she’s going to meet Abu Rasil.’
‘We’re coming,’ said the German, hanging up.
Sara was relieved that Breuer had believed her straightaway. It was a matter of urgency if they were going to catch Abu Rasil. And Breuer probably realised that.
And Agneta?
What was her role in all of this?
Who on earth was she?
56
Eventually, grown-up Agneta had been given her opportunity to take revenge on behalf of little Lidiya for her father’s death.
After having waited and watched for decades, she had discovered cracks in the evil structure. Cracks that she could exploit, strengthen and enlarge. And by that stage she had been a trusted source for a long time, following thirty-five years of dutiful service on behalf of global socialism. A generation.
In East Germany, the Wall had fallen and in the Soviet Union the new General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev had begun to open up the Soviet system to give it a chance of survival.
Agneta knew that change and adjustment were always equivalent to vulnerability, and she began to seek out points of attack.
Via her handler, Yuri, Agneta knew that opposition to Gorbachev was widespread within the KGB – right to the top. There were strong differences within the mighty apparatus of power. And differences could be exploited.
It took little time to identify the key players. There were two factions, one on either side of the Secretary General. On the one side was KGB Chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov, and the reactionary forces surrounding him. On the other side was Boris Yeltsin, member of the Supreme Soviet and former first secretary of the Moscow gorkom – appointed by Gorbachev and forced into resignation from the Politburo because he thought that perestroika was advancing too slowly. Yuri was able to tell her that Yeltsin was bitter and filled with a thirst for revenge. He was aiming for the post of president of the constituent Soviet republic of Russia, and once he was there he would become very useful.
When news reached them that Mikhail Gorbachev wa
s to visit Sweden in June 1991, Agneta realised her chance had arrived. She requested direct contact with someone as close to Yeltsin as possible, and Yuri put her in touch with Gennady Burbulis, one of Yeltsin’s closest advisers. Once that connection was established, she could focus on her plan.
Convincing her vain husband to invite the Soviet leader to their home via his old drinking buddy, the cabinet minister, hadn’t been difficult. What a triumphant return to the limelight! Once the seed was sown, Stellan handled it all by himself.
Offering the prominent guest some relaxing company in a private setting was deemed desirable. But since Sager House still hadn’t become the prime minister’s residence, and Ingvar Carlsson lived in a very plain terraced house in Tyresö, the suggestion of dinner at the home of Stellan Broman was gratefully accepted. Stellan lived in a fine house, and his commitment to the peace movement had always been appreciated by Moscow, so the Soviet advisers accepted the Swedish government’s proposal.
Agneta had taken Lotta and Malin on a mini cruise to Leningrad and the Hermitage Museum, and once there she didn’t take long to complain of sore feet and settle down in front of da Vinci’s Madonna and Child. While her daughters continued their tour of the enormous museum, Agneta was able to meet with Yuri in peace and quiet and receive the equipment she’d requested – equipment that she had no problems whatsoever bringing into the country, since back then she was still recognised as Uncle Stellan’s wife more or less everywhere. No Swedish customs officer was going to look inside Agneta Broman’s bags.
Ahead of the distinguished visit, she had plenty of time to plant hidden microphones – in the dining room, on the terrace and in the living room. Even in the sauna, just to be sure. And during the evening she gently asked leading questions of the Soviet president until she felt she had everything she needed. It was all well disguised by Stellan’s enthusiastic talk of disarmament and nuclear-free zones.
The day after, she’d listened through all of it, picked out the parts that were useful and wrote new questions. Then she’d called Gunnar Granberg, an impressionist who’d made his breakthrough on Stellan’s show with his parodies of politicians and celebrities. Agneta confided in him that she was secretly preparing a surprise for Stellan’s birthday, and she asked Granberg whether he would do an impersonation for her. She asked whether she could record him imitating Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson speaking English. Of course he had agreed. Anything for Uncle Stellan. When Carlsson later lost the election, Agneta was able to tell Granberg that this was why the recording had never been used.
In practice, she’d used the equipment provided to her by Yuri to cut together the Granberg imitation of Ingvar Carlsson’s questions with the real Gorbachev’s answers to her own. She even included a recorded phrase from the real Carlsson first, in case the intended recipients carried out any kind of voice identification checks. But then she built her own story.
Agneta’s question to Gorbachev, ‘Have you given up on Lenin and Stalin?’ was replaced by Granberg’s Carlsson saying, ‘You have strong opponents in the form of Kryuchkov and the KGB.’ And she joined this together with Gorbachev’s answer about the former leaders: ‘They have played their part and belong to another era. We must move on. We must build the new Soviet without them.’
After a couple of days, Agneta was in possession of a completely sensational dialogue between Sweden’s prime minister and the president of the Soviet Union. Under the pretext of visiting invented relatives in the far north, Agneta flew to Helsinki. There she met with Yuri and passed on the tape with the faked exchanges to send further up the organisation’s chain of command – top priority. Yuri was a traditionalist, and just like his bosses, he’d long wanted to see the reformer Gorbachev toppled. He gratefully accepted the opportunity.
Just as planned, the recording had seriously shaken opponents in both the government and the KGB. Now they could hear for themselves that they were to be swept away, and the powers at large in the USSR were well acquainted with the meaning of the word ‘purge’.
When Agneta was told of the reactions, she went behind Yuri’s back and made contact with Yeltsin’s adviser Burbulis, explaining that Gorbachev was under threat from opponents within the KGB and the party. This was the ideal opportunity to support the president and push through more of the reforms that Yeltsin advocated.
In July, Gorbachev and Yeltsin had signed an agreement for increased reforms.
In the eyes of the opponents, this was the final evidence that Gorbachev was selling out the Soviet Union, and that their own days were numbered.
They had to act, and in August they saw their chance.
Satisfied that he had an ally in the shape of Yeltsin, Gorbachev departed Moscow to rest at his dacha in Crimea. This was exploited by the conspirators to place him under house arrest and notify the people that he had been deposed. A junta comprising nine people took power, led by Prime Minister Valentin Pavlov, Defence Minister Dmitry Yazov and KGB Chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov.
The group acted in panic based on information from the illegal Desirée and the unholy alliance of the former sworn enemies, Yeltsin and Gorbachev.
The coup demonstrated with absolute clarity who was on the side of the opposition and wished to preserve the old Soviet Union. Something which suited Desirée perfectly.
While Yuri focused on the perpetrators behind the putsch, she rekindled contact with Burbulis. She revealed to him that the recording with Gorbachev was fake, and with this trump card Burbulis was able to persuade Yeltsin to act.
The vengeful Yeltsin immediately saw the opportunities at hand. He also saw the risks, but they didn’t bother him.
By heading out into the streets during the coup, climbing up onto a tank and urging soldiers to lay down their weapons, Yeltsin transformed himself into a man of the people. Once he had the military on his side and was able to prove that the recording of Gorbachev was false, he made the coup plotters back down. Half the battle was won.
With Gorbachev under arrest, President Bush of the USA had no choice other than to support Yeltsin to avoid a return to the Cold War. Not to mention the risk of what he described as ‘Yugoslavian chaos’ occurring within a nuclear superpower.
Yuri quickly became a turncoat and gave Yeltsin his full support, but he realised that he’d been deceived by Desirée, and it soon became apparent to all that the coup had failed.
Gorbachev, now released, had had his wings clipped and was unable to stand up to the new strongman, Boris Yeltsin.
Given that Desirée’s intelligence had been fortuitous thus far, Burbulis advised Yeltsin to continue listening to her. And since Agneta knew through Yuri that Ukraine and Belarus wanted to strike out alone, she proposed a secret meeting between Yeltsin and the presidents of the two countries, Leonid Kravchuk and Stanislav Shushkevich, so that they could then quite simply present Gorbachev and the Soviet Union with a fait accompli.
The three met under cover of great secrecy in a hunting cabin in the forest in the Belarusian Belavezhskaya National Park, where they signed the agreement declaring the dissolution of the Soviet Union and its replacement by the Commonwealth of Independent States. Gorbachev declared it an illegal coup d’état, but he was unable to halt events and a few weeks later he was gone.
Yuri was furious at the fall of the Soviet Union, and he deeply resented Agneta’s role in it. But as a new follower of Yeltsin, there was nothing he could do. He didn’t even protest when Yeltsin established the ‘Hero of the Russian Federation’ medal as the highest decoration in the land, and awarded it to Desirée in recognition of her assistance.
The party that had killed her father had been crushed, the country that had ruined her life no longer existed. Evil had been conquered.
It was like a story. One single little girl had defeated the monster.
After the victory, Agneta had given herself a new mission. One that was to last for the rest of her life, and that she approached with tremendous dedication. But when the phone had rung that Mo
nday, everything had been threatened with collapse.
Her final battle was to secure the future for those she loved the most.
And now it was time.
She was ready.
Pills of every colour of the rainbow lay before her. Perhaps her final ones. The blue blood-thinning warfarin, the yellow lercanidipine for her blood pressure, the atenotol and atorvastatin for her heart. If she didn’t make it, then at least it wouldn’t be her own body giving up on her.
She swallowed them all with a glass of water and then headed for the door. She stopped and wondered what would happen to C.M. if she didn’t come back.
She quickly found a pen and paper and wrote ‘help me’ on it. Then she affixed it to the front door and left it unlocked. By the time a newspaper delivery boy, bin collector or Jehovah’s Witness saw it, tonight’s encounter would be done and dusted.
Agneta was surprised by her own softness. Was it old age?
She went over to her own house. Not that it had ever been truly hers.
There she was.
Lotta.
Just as Agneta had feared. Her daughter’s conscientiousness surpassed even her own.
Lotta looked up but didn’t seem surprised.
‘Mum,’ was all she said.
‘You have to leave,’ said Agneta.
‘Where’ve you been?’ Lotta asked.
She nodded to the neighbouring house.
‘With C.M.?’ said Lotta. ‘The whole time?’
‘A couple of days.’
She looked around. Time was not on her side.
‘You need to leave,’ said Agneta. ‘Think of the children.’
‘I need to know something.’
‘What?’
‘Who shot Dad?’
‘I did.’
‘Why?’
‘To protect you and your sister. And your children.’
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