Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End

by Leif Gw Persson

  “You shouldn’t read that kind of shit,” said his big brother, sighing dejectedly. “I remember you were the same when you were little. You read a lot of shit and then you believed it too. For a while I thought there was something seriously wrong with you.”

  “It was a joke,” said Johansson. “Skoal, by the way.” That you believed, he thought.

  “You shouldn’t read a lot of shit,” his brother repeated. “Look at me. I haven’t eaten porridge or read a damn book since I started being able to defend myself, and I’ll be damned if I don’t make just as much in a month as you pull in in a year. Skoal, then.”

  Certainly, thought Johansson, marking his agreement with his glass. I guess that’s precisely the point, he thought.

  The following morning—he’d just sat down to start the day’s work on Krassner’s papers—Wiklander called him despite the fact that it was Saturday.

  “I got the number from your brother,” Wiklander explained. “It was those counts and barons you were wondering about.”

  “Are you at work on a Saturday?” asked Johansson. Wiklander can go places, he thought.

  “I’m slaving at the after-hours unit,” Wiklander explained. “Thought about going to the Canary Islands in January but the holidays can really put a draft in your wallet.”

  “I’m listening,” said Johansson, who had never been to the Canary Islands in his entire life and had no intention of ever going there, despite the fact that he was a real policeman.

  It had taken awhile even for Wiklander, for none of the subjects of inquiry were in the police’s own register or archives, and for a time he’d almost believed that he would have to go outside the building, but then fortunately he’d happened to think of his colleague Söderhjelm.

  “But then I happened to think of our colleague Söderhjelm in the fraud unit,” Wiklander explained, “and it struck me that she’s one of them.”

  “One of them?”

  “Yes, one of the nobility, that is,” Wiklander clarified. “They usually know everything about each other.”

  Personally Johansson had only a faint recollection of a younger, female colleague. Well trained and at the same time courteous but without being the least bit ingratiating, which was actually an all-too-rare combination in the world where he’d chosen to live his life.

  “I’m listening,” he said.

  “Yes, those people clearly know everything about each other,” Wiklander repeated. “She is supposedly distantly related to that von Wrede too. She arranged for me to chat with someone she knew at the House of Nobles. It’s an organization they have,” he clarified for his obviously commoner boss.

  “I’m listening,” said Johansson. Get to the point already, he thought, feeling a slight irritation when he saw the piles of paper in front of him.

  “They’re dead,” said Wiklander. “All of them except for that math genius are dead. Although he’s not nobility, of course. Some old family of clergy from Västergötland, the Söderhjelm woman thought. Semirefined, if you like.”

  . . .

  All of the aristocrats involved were dead, and no normal causes of death either, according to Wiklander. First out was Captain Count Lewenhaupt, who had passed away as early as 1949 from the complications of a tropical disease that he’d picked up during a safari in Africa.

  “Some mysterious worm that crept in under his skin and took up residence in his liver. He died at some special clinic for tropical diseases in London,” Wiklander summarized.

  Bilharzia, thought Johansson, who was not the usual policeman and knew a little of everything.

  Second Lieutenant Baron von Wrede had died in a traffic accident in 1961. According to Wiklander he’d evidently driven his convertible sports car right into the stable on the estate where he lived.

  “The word on the ground is that he was drunk and had argued with his wife,” said Wiklander, who was also a real policeman of a more usual type than Johansson.

  “Björnstjerna, then,” said Johansson. “Where, when, and how did he die?”

  “Seems to have been a completely normal death, actually,” said Wiklander, his voice sounding almost a little disappointed. “Died at the Sophia Home; in 1964, of cancer. He wasn’t particularly old, either. Born in 1923.”

  “Forselius, then,” Johansson pressed. “What have you found out about him?”

  “He’s still alive,” declared Wiklander. “Although he was considerably older than any of the others. Seems to be an interesting type. He’s even in the encyclopedia. I trotted down to the public library. Took the opportunity to peek at a few books that he’s written.”

  “So was there anything interesting?” said Johansson in a friendly tone.

  “Sure,” said Wiklander. “Although it was pure Greek plus a lot of numbers, so I’ll reserve my judgment.”

  “Interesting type?”

  “If I’ve understood things correctly, I believe he’s worked quite a bit for SePo,” said Wiklander. “Even in later years, actually, despite the fact that he’s as old as the hills. If I haven’t gotten the matter completely turned around, I believe he’s the one who built their computer program for codes and encryption and all that stuff they work with.”

  “You haven’t talked to anyone?” said Johansson, and for some reason he felt a faint stab of worry.

  “Not my style,” said Wiklander dismissively. “I found it out on my own.”

  “Except for Söderhjelm,” said Johansson judiciously.

  “She’s like me so, she doesn’t count,” said Wiklander curtly.

  “That’s good,” said Johansson. “What else were you thinking about doing this weekend?” he added familiarly, and as a suitable and diplomatic conclusion.

  “As soon as I get off I thought about asking Officer Söderhjelm to dinner,” said Wiklander. “Nice lady, actually.”

  Nice to hear that someone is normal, thought Johansson, looking at his paper-strewn desk.

  “There’s one thing I’m wondering about,” said Wiklander, sounding a little cautious. “If you’ll excuse me, chief.”

  “Shoot,” said Johansson. “I’m listening.”

  “What is this really about?” said Wiklander. “Is it something I ought to know about, or what?”

  “Well,” said Johansson. “If it stays completely between us?”

  “Obviously,” said Wiklander.

  “I’m actually in the process of writing a mystery,” said Johansson. “I just needed some good characters.”

  “So that’s how it is,” said Wiklander, whose voice suddenly sounded very wary. “Too bad they were dead, then.”

  “You can’t have everything,” said Johansson tranquilly, and then he thanked him for his help and finished the conversation.

  In a normal mystery isn’t everyone dead sooner or later? he thought as he put down the receiver, and you can’t have everything. Or can you? And for some reason he started thinking about the woman he’d met at the little post office up on Körsbärsvägen.

  . . .

  During 1953 the prime minister had changed the direction of his life. It wasn’t a dramatic change, but rather a course correction, and he seemed not only to have retained his interest in secret activities but also to have developed them in more conventional, national forms. And according to Krassner, this had all happened not only with Buchanan’s consent but with his clearly expressed approval and support.

  First he had begun phasing out his involvement with student politics to switch his sights to greater political goals. As a natural consequence of this, among other things, his activity within the CIA decreased sharply, and after the summer of 1953 there was nothing in either Krassner’s text or Buchanan’s documentation to indicate that he carried out any direct assignments whatsoever on their behalf. On the other hand, according to Krassner, he still had close, recurring contacts with Buchanan all the way up to the spring of 1955, when he’d sent his strange, poetically worded notice that his life between the longing of summer and the cold of wi
nter was now to be seen as history.

  During the same year he’d also gotten a steady job—two steady jobs, in fact. Right before the summer of 1953 he’d gotten a position as an “analyst” with the intelligence department at army headquarters, and only a few months later he’d started working as an assistant to the then prime minister. Not a bad job for a highly talented young man with great ambitions in life, and not a bad employer, either. Not least as his professional connection to the twenty-five-years-older prime minister soon appeared to those around them like an almost classic father-son relationship.

  The prime minister as a young man, Pilgrim, Johansson’s own prime minister, seemed to have had a genuine interest in security work and intelligence operations. His work as an analyst also appeared to have been relatively unbound by the label his employer had put on his assignment. Whether that was in order to mislead the devil, or only a simple expression of the fact that he actually was a free operator, was beyond Johansson’s ability to judge, and Krassner no longer had any substantial contributions to make, either. But there was hardly anyone trying to rap the old prime minister’s personal assistant on the knuckles, thought Johansson.

  To start with, according to Krassner but without particular details or evidence in the form of documents, he was said to have worked on the regular military cooperation between the Swedish and American intelligence services; what this actually involved was to analyze security requirements and in the end to exchange personnel, services, and the necessary material to satisfy those requirements. Here on several occasions he was said to have turned to Buchanan for assistance in both word and deed, but it was unclear what this would have consisted of in concrete terms. Krassner also pointed out that because Buchanan was working in a different branch of CIA operations, his contribution had mostly concerned arranging contacts and generally functioning as a type of door-opener and personal guarantor that Pilgrim was both “a good kid” and of “the right stuff.”

  Of the prime minister’s alleged role in the building up of IB, the Information Bureau, Krassner had little to convey beyond what had come out or been suggested in the domestic public debate. Krassner recounted these briefly as generally known, clear facts, and that was all. Pilgrim had played a central role when the secret organization whose primary task was to keep the political opponents of the social democrats under supervision was established, and according to the same source, in a conversation with Buchanan as early as the fall of 1954, he was said to have made it completely clear that he considered his social democratic organization the “natural governing party in Sweden.”

  Viewpoints of that type naturally disturbed Buchanan. Especially as they came from a “highly talented young man” with “stable conservative views,” and among his posthumous papers there was also a photocopy of his notations from the conversation with Pilgrim. Judging by the handwriting and the copy, written by Buchanan at the time when the conversation was supposed to have taken place, but as a piece of evidence nonetheless of secondary value because when all was said and done it was Buchanan’s version of what Pilgrim was supposed to have said. Not to mention being generally hard to interpret and cryptic in places.

  All the same, thought Johansson, for by this time even Pilgrim was starting to show clear signs that his passion for intelligence operations was in the process of cooling. Instead it was his political activity and ambitions that had come to the fore, and it was also now that his career caught fire and started taking off in earnest. His political assignments started to be piled high and he’d gotten more and more say in his own job in a formal sense as well. At the start of the sixties he’d become head of the prime minister’s chancellery, and only a few years later he’d taken a seat in the government. During the following years he’d exchanged ministerial positions in the direction of the short end of the table, and when his own boss retired, at the end of the 1960s, it was time: prime minister, despite the fact that he was one of the very youngest members of the government and almost an alien species as a social democrat, considering his background, upbringing, and education.

  I see then, thought Johansson, looking at his watch. The clock in his stomach had not started seriously ticking, mostly due to the fact that there were still several hours left before dinner, but he felt a strong desire to get out and move about. Not a walk, thought Johansson, for then melancholy would strike him in earnest. Drive into town, he decided, and return the book about economic history he’d borrowed from the library.

  Once he was at the library he also took the opportunity to make a few inquiries of his own, and although he was only at a public library in Sundsvall, he more or less stumbled across an interesting piece of information about the mysterious Forselius that Wiklander evidently had missed. Not so strange in itself, thought Johansson, considering what he knew and what Wiklander didn’t know.

  First he found a book with the title Great Swedes in Mathematics, and there he retrieved both Sonya Kovalevsky—despite the fact that she was Russian—and Professor Forselius, whose secret activities were passed over in complete silence and in which the further significance of what he’d otherwise done was in any event beyond Johansson. True, he could count, but higher mathematics left him cold. On the other hand there was nothing wrong with his eyes, and he noticed quite quickly that Forselius clearly had a disciple who was no slouch either. Who moreover shared the same name with the prime minister’s special adviser and approximately the same age too. So that’s how it is, thought Johansson, and then he returned home to his brother’s to have dinner.

  Johansson lay awake quite a while that night and thought about his knowledge of the country’s prime minister, and for some reason he felt almost exhilarated as he did so. Hardly the man who’s described in the bourgeois press, thought Johansson, smiling as he lay in bed. More like some hero of the Western world out of a random issue of Reader’s Digest. He used to read the magazine cover to cover when he was young, “Humor in Uniform” and a little of the cold war’s musketeers, but no lettres de cachet, for here it was more likely a question of messages written with invisible ink, and no frothing horses but rather an old Buick V-8, rumbling along through dark and stormy nights, and if there were trapdoors they were probably in people’s heads. Although the hollow oak trees where you hid things would have been the same. Oaks could get as old as anything, after all.

  There must have been a great deal worth writing about, thought Johansson, for he’d also read that in Reader’s Digest. The scoundrels from the East used to have pens that were actually pistols, umbrellas with poisoned ferrules, and innocent-looking walking sticks that with a quick tap on the handle could be transformed into shining rapiers with razor-sharp blades. But what had Pilgrim actually had, aside from his noble intentions and a good cause?

  He would have needed someone like my big brother, thought Johansson. A slightly simpler companion like big brother with his shrewd head and his huge fists and his completely unsentimental ability to punch anyone and everyone on the jaw as soon as things didn’t suit him. Or like Jarnebring, perhaps? True, he wasn’t as shrewd as his brother, far from it, but when it came to genuine hand-to-hand fighting he was unbeatable. Not even James Bond could have managed him even by escaping, for then Jarnebring would have caught up with him and chopped him on the neck and given him a going-over until he was no more than an empty suit coat and a pair of limp trousers from some tailor on Old Bond Street and. … About then he fell asleep, and when he woke up in the morning it was with the same smile on his lips.

  Sweet Jesus, thought Johansson, laughing a little to himself. Pilgrim and Jarnie, what a radar unit.

  High time to tie up my sack, and the sooner the better, thought Johansson, because it was Sunday, Epiphany Eve, and the day before his journey home. It had been a quick shower and an even quicker breakfast, and at six-thirty he was already at his place at the large desk in the farm office.

  The piles before him had thinned out and most of it he’d been able to sort out. Of the documentation on
ly a letter with its envelope and a condolence card with a black frame and a three-line poem remained. But these were original documents, not copies, they were handwritten, and according to Krassner it was the prime minister, Pilgrim, who had written them, after he’d become prime minister, and according to Krassner he had written them in May 1974. They were postmarked Stockholm and sent by express mail to Buchanan’s post office box at home in Albany.

  Almost twenty years after he’d written his farewell letter, thought Johansson. An entire lifetime, considering all that had happened and all that he’d experienced. Peculiar, very peculiar, thought Johansson.

  We ought to be able to check on these, he thought from force of habit while by turns he held the letter, the condolence card, and the envelope between the nails of his thumb and index finger, twisting and turning them. Perhaps there are prints too, he thought. American technicians had succeeded in securing fingerprints that were decades old—he’d read that in the FBI’s monthly journal—and it was almost always a matter of prints left on paper. Where would I get his fingerprints from? thought Johansson with a wry smile.

  . . .

  The letter first: It was short, written by hand with Pilgrim’s characteristic, expressively forward-leaning penmanship—like a cavalry charge on paper, thought Johansson, smiling again. The stationery was thick and certainly expensive. When he held it up against the light he saw the Lessebo watermark.

  Fionn,

  Heard about Raven’s tragic death yesterday. I truly hope that you put away the bastards who did it. Because I’m guessing that you intend to go to his funeral, I would be grateful if you could deliver the enclosed final greeting from me. Don’t ask me why, but Raven was a true lover of Icelandic sagas. Take care!

  Pilgrim

  Then the condolence card, which he had sent in the same envelope.

  If this is Snorre then I’m Japanese, thought Johansson while he read the three lines on the card, written in Swedish: