Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End

by Leif Gw Persson

  “Would you be able to do a few rounds out in the field?” asked Waltin.

  “Yes,” she said, nodding. “That’s no problem. I’ve never met a guy in my whole life who thought that I was a police officer.”

  Well now, well now, thought Waltin, for his fantasies were fragile things.

  “Find out as much as possible, then we’ll talk after the weekend.” He smiled again and nodded. A little paternally, as one should smile at young girls like her. Build up trust before proceeding on to the essentials.

  Assistant Detective Jeanette Eriksson was not seventeen but rather twenty-seven. When she was younger her appearance had been her main problem. Nowadays it was both an advantage and a disadvantage, and as for Waltin she was completely clear about how he saw the matter. It wasn’t the first time she had encountered this reaction from men like Waltin. More important still in the context within which she operated was that she was also a very capable police officer and certainly worthy of a better fate than the one Waltin was preparing for her. After their meeting she had gone directly into her new office; now assigned to a so-called special project, she had her own so-called project room with a key of her own and her own access codes and all the formal trappings. Once there she made a list of the various things she wanted to know about Jonathan Paul Krassner, who went by John, born in 1953 in Albany, New York, USA.

  First she had called a colleague with the police out at Arlanda to see if any particular notes had been made when Krassner had entered the country a little less than a week earlier. None had been made. Because he was from the United States, not even the reply to the obligatory question of whether he was here as a tourist or for work or for some other reason had been noted. Pity you’re not an ordinary gook, thought Eriksson reflexively.

  After that, she had spoken with a colleague who was in charge of their informant at Swedish Television and asked him, on behalf of the boss and for reasons that she didn’t need to go into, to get hold of all the observations the informant had made when he met Krassner, as quickly as possible and in detail. It hadn’t even crossed her mind that she could do that herself. If she needed to get physically closer to Krassner she didn’t want to risk any reactions from his new acquaintances over whom she couldn’t have any control, and showing her identity and her face for such a notoriously unreliable informant as was the case here was obviously unthinkable.

  Already on Sunday evening, after having worked diligently the whole weekend, she knew a great deal about the person who was currently a project with a secret budget. For that reason she had also phoned Waltin to report. Waltin sounded satisfied. He wanted to meet with her the next morning already and for reasons he couldn’t go into, this must take place outside the building. A company with an address on Norr Mälarstrand only five minutes’ walk from the building; it was a little exciting considering what she had heard whispered in the corridors about the so-called external operation.

  Daddy’s clever girl, thought Assistant Detective Eriksson when she put down the phone, but at the same time the thought was not completely disagreeable. A little tingling.

  Uncle Claes’s clever girl, thought Waltin, and it was a very appealing thought.

  Berg had spent the weekend pondering what Forselius had related to him. As always when he dealt with complicated security questions, he had closed himself up in his study at home in the villa in Bromma and made use of pen and paper. Paper that he was always careful to destroy when he was through thinking. Secret police history is very instructive in that regard, about people who were careless with their papers and other possessions and left unnecessary tracks that an opponent could make use of.

  When they moved out to Bromma from the apartment in the city, his wife had sometimes teased him. “God, how nice,” she used to say, “that we finally have a fireplace so I don’t have to watch you starting fires in the kitchen sink.” Berg had taken it with a sense of humor, for he knew better, but, with all respect to modern paper shredders—he of course had one of the latest and best models at home—when it came to destroying papers, fire was superior to anything else. First you started the fire and then you were careful to crush and powder the ashes.

  There were three levels to what Forselius had said. On the first level was the basic question of whether there was any truth in his musings or whether he was just imagining things. Berg had discussed just that aspect with him extensively. Forselius was widely known for his capacity for critical thinking and not least when it came to questioning himself, his own ideas, his own intellectual capacity, his own motives. “In the world in which I live there is no room for either lies or wishful thinking,” he had said to Berg the first time they met.

  Of course Berg had also tried to press him on this point. How did he himself view the suspicions that Krassner had sown in his mind?

  “If it was a question of placing bets I’d put my money on the fact that he knows something and he knows it’s true and it’s even so bad he can prove it’s true.”

  Here Forselius had started to laugh a little while he supplied himself with a fresh cognac.

  “What he knows and how much he knows?” Forselius shrugged his shoulders in an eloquent gesture.

  “You have no ideas on that point?” asked Berg.

  “Well,” said Forselius. “If it hadn’t been the case that he’s related to my old acquaintance, then I probably would have decided that he was only trying to get attention. Or that he was out snooping around in the most general way, as is the custom with that kind of humanist hack.”

  Forselius took a hefty gulp from his large snifter.

  “As I’m sure you see this hangs together,” Forselius continued. “True or false? If it’s false, stop and do something else instead. If it’s true, completely or only partly, we go ahead. What is true and what is false? When we find that out we can swing ourselves up to the highest level. Is that which is true actually interesting and in that case to whom? Whatever the case, these are empirical questions and you of course can resort to that sly type with the watch and those fancy clothes for the real heavy work.”

  Here the chuckling had turned into a minor coughing attack.

  “Exactly like when you break a code,” said Berg.

  “Well,” said Forselius. “As a general description perhaps, but completely uninteresting when you’re going to do it. You’re a good man, Berg, and you are of course no numbskull, but in my world …”

  Forselius made a gesture with his hands.

  “I know, I know,” said Berg. “Math was never my strong suit when I was in school.”

  That’s how it’ll be, thought Berg, and how do I get Waltin to do his utmost without giving him all the pieces? As far as he was concerned he knew exactly what he should do. He didn’t intend to utter a syllable to anyone about Forselius’s suspicions. First he would see about getting onto more solid ground, and once he had done so he could take a position on how he should act regarding the top level in his world. Whom he should inform about what.

  In the elevated and beautiful world where Forselius and his ilk were, where everything, even chaos, could be ordered and described and explained with the help of symbols and functions, there was naturally no place for disturbing human factors of the type that afflicted Berg in particular when he came to his workplace on Monday morning.

  “Welcome,” said his secretary, smiling. “You’ve received an invitation to a very fine lunch.”

  “When?” asked Berg.

  “Today,” said his secretary. “The prime minister’s special adviser called awhile ago and wondered if you had time to have lunch with him today. He wants you to call him.”

  “How did he sound?” said Berg, and even as he said it he regretted it.

  “He sounded very nice,” said the secretary, surprised. “Why? Has something happened?”

  Berg shook his head. If I have time? What choice do I have? None, he thought.

  On the surface he had been his usual self, the same half-closed eyelids, the same sarc
astic curl of the lips, and the same reclining position, in spite of the fact that he was actually eating. It was his manner that bothered Berg deeply. For in a purely objective sense, if you looked at what he really said and how he said it, he had been nice to Berg. An obliging and entertaining host at a lunch, quite simply. Furthermore, in a place to which few had access. One of the government’s most exclusive guest dining rooms at Rosenbad.

  Both his behavior and his choice of milieu disturbed Berg more than if he had tried to grab hold of Berg and butt heads with him. That’s no doubt the point of this playacting, he thought. Calm, he thought. Just calm, calm, calm.

  “It was nice to get to see you for lunch, Berg,” said the special adviser, raising his glass of mineral water.

  “Nice to be here,” said Berg neutrally, and replied by raising his near beer.

  “I thought that our most recent meeting was enormously positive. I got a definite feeling that we actually started to approach those matters that both you and I are assigned to manage.”

  Are you being ironic, you bastard? thought Berg and contented himself with nodding.

  “I’m not being ironic so don’t misunderstand me,” said the prime minister’s special adviser, making a slightly dismissive motion with his left hand. “What I mean is that both you and I, each in his own place, are prisoners of our various contexts.”

  Now where are you going with this? thought Berg and was content to nod again.

  “Quite a few years ago, when I was doing my military service, at the kind of place that one can’t talk about—but you already know that, of course—I wrote an essay about mirror war.”

  “That sounds interesting. I’m listening,” said Berg.

  “Of course my thesis was based on the special operation in which I was serving at the time. I had a superior, if you please, and mine in particular was in a league of his own. He was a very talented and exceptionally cussed old son of a bitch, and I myself was only eighteen years old.”

  Forselius, thought Berg, so now I know and he knows that I know, and why does he want me to know that he knows too?

  “Basically it dealt with what we say to one another, in speech, in writing, with gestures and glances and in all other manners and means. For example, by not saying or doing anything whatsoever. Or just by avoiding the reaction that our opponent is expecting.” Berg contented himself with nodding; he had set his fork and knife aside.

  “The ideal communication in the best of all possible worlds, populated only by good people. … How does that look? To begin with, it is true. The sender is not mistaken on that point. What he or she is saying is actually true. In addition it is important to both the sender and the recipient, and in the best of worlds all communications are of course good. They are of use both to the sender and to the recipient and for the world around them.”

  “The best of worlds,” said Berg, as he experienced a remarkable sense of peace, which he hadn’t felt for a long time.

  “Compare that with the world in which you and I live. I couldn’t help seeing what you were thinking when I mentioned that I knew Forselius, in spite of the fact that you have a face that a poker shark would give his dealing hand for.”

  The prime minister’s special adviser smiled at Berg and nodded, and suddenly he seemed not in the least ironic.

  “I thank you for the compliment,” said Berg. “Would you have seen it if you hadn’t talked with Forselius?”

  “Probably not.” The special adviser shrugged his shoulders. “I have a simple question. Is there anything to Forselius’s suspicions, and by that I don’t mean those kind of idiotic obviosities such as that our social-democratic government and our neutral and noble fatherland were bedfellows with the U.S. and the Western powers on security matters ever since we knew how the war would end.”

  “I can see that we’re saving time here,” said Berg, smiling faintly.

  “Exactly, and I’m the one who’s saying it so you can just relax and enjoy. You know, I know, all the others like you and me know. There are even editors-in-chief and professors of political science and modern history who know that their military service and placements have never been by chance, nor the psychological operations either. Even that scandal reporter Guillou knows, so it’s all the same that the media hasn’t informed everyone else. High time they did, by the way, so we could at least deprive that bastard of one of his conceivable arguments.”

  “The snag is no doubt our policy of neutrality,” said Berg, feeling sharper and more secure than he had for a long time.

  “Obviously. There is nothing in our world that is simply good or bad. We are also the prisoner of our compromises, and as long as we here at home are not completely sure of how it’s going to go out there, we are the world leaders at compromise.”

  “That, I believe, is a pretty good summary of Swedish postwar politics,” agreed Berg.

  “And neither you nor I are the first to arrive at that.”

  “Certainly not,” said Berg.

  “But it’s you and I who can end up in a jam, and it’s you and I who are expected to wriggle ourselves and all the others who’ve given us our jobs out of the jam, and if we don’t manage that then we, people like you and me, get squeezed a little more.”

  “Speak up if you’re thinking about looking for a new job,” said Berg.

  “And how is it this time?” The prime minister’s special adviser looked seriously at his lunch guest. “Is there any sort of confounded—sorry—personal, historically determined, private obviosity which is of sufficient interest to the mass media that we could end up in a jam?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m trying to find out,” said Berg.

  “But that’s just great,” his host said with emphasis. “That’s what we’ll do then, help each other out. Completely without the aid of mirrors.”

  On Monday morning right before eight o’clock Assistant Detective Jeanette Eriksson entered the building on Norr Mälarstrand where she was to meet Waltin: an Art Deco building with large balconies and the best view of the water and the rises of south Stockholm on the other side. The company to which she was going was on the third floor, but from the name placard in the lobby it appeared that there was a Waltin on the top floor of the building. And if that’s where he lives he must have an amazing view, thought Assistant Detective Eriksson. The office was not bad either; small, to be sure, but light, modern, functional, and tastefully furnished. Quite certainly much more expensive than it appeared. Waltin was well dressed, newly shaved, efficient, and served freshly brewed coffee. Exciting guy, she thought. Wonder what he’s really like?

  “Okay, Jeanette,” he said, smiling. “Tell me.”

  As concerned Krassner the individual there was not much to relate. Not yet, for it had been a weekend, even off in the United States, and because she couldn’t take the normal shortcut, that aspect would no doubt take time. On the other hand she had found him.

  “He’s living in the student dormitory called the Rosehip on Körsbärsvägen, on the sixteenth floor in one of those student corridors with eight rooms and a common kitchen. He sublet the room through an international student organization.”

  “Who are the others living in the same corridor?” asked Waltin.

  “One room is standing empty, because the person who lives there has gone home to his parents. He’s studying law and is from the province of Östergötland. His mother suffered a serious traffic accident a month ago. As far as the other six go, besides Krassner, they’re normal students in their twenties. All of them men, actually, although I don’t believe they have gender-segregated residences. I can check that out if you want.”

  Waltin shook his head and smiled weakly.

  “Okay,” Eriksson continued. “One of the guys is at the tech college, one’s in business school, one’s studying at GIH, one’s studying political science, one sociology, and one works with information management. All of them are Swedes except for the last, who’s some type of student from South Africa. H
e’s here on a scholarship this semester, black guy. He’s older than the others, twenty-eight, born in Pretoria. He got his scholarship from the Swedish trade union federation.”

  Typical, thought Waltin. The social democrats and their blacks and Arabs and all those other gooks that they drag here.

  “Do we have anything on any of them?” he asked.

  “Not with us or within the open operation. Yes, if we include the kinds of things that all boys get involved with in their teens. The one at GIH was a little wild when he was in high school, but otherwise, no, just normal Swedish students. None of them are from Stockholm. Country boys.”

  Waltin nodded. A purely idiotic project that an old bastard had palmed off on Berg, he thought. The only question was how to get himself where he wanted to go without wasting time on unnecessary work.

  “Do you have any ideas about how we proceed from here?” he asked.

  “I thought about trying to find out who he is,” said Eriksson. “As I said, that’s going to take time, but I have some possibilities I thought I’d try out.”

  “I have an idea too.” Waltin smiled and nodded.

  “Tell me,” said Eriksson, looking at him with curiosity.

  Waltin smiled secretively and shook his head.

  “Leave his biography to me, then I promise you’ll get a complete description of him at the end of the week. Without cheating.”

  “Without cheating?” She smiled inquisitively and nodded. He actually seems super smart, thought Eriksson.

  “Without cheating,” said Waltin emphatically and held up his right thumb.

  Half as big as mine, he thought when she held out her small thumb, and he felt the well-known arousal when he saw her before him, curled up in the corner of his big sofa with her little thumb in her little mouth while the tears ran down her small, round cheeks.