Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End

by Leif Gw Persson

  “Stop persecuting Lisa, or I’ll see to it that she reports you, and don’t try to say that you’re here on duty,” said Berg, pushing aside Waltin’s hand with the ID card.

  “I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” said Waltin. The guy is completely crazy, he thought. You can see it in his eyes.

  “You and I both know,” said Berg. “She reports you, my colleagues and I who’ve seen you stand up and testify. Do we understand one another?”

  “I would encourage you to leave my car immediately,” said Waltin. Completely crazy, he thought. Totally crazy.

  “This isn’t your car, it’s the department’s car, just so you know,” said Berg as he opened the door to get out.

  Waltin didn’t say anything, for the threat in his eyes was so real that he could touch it.

  So he just remained sitting and watched Berg go over to the stuffed sow and take her by the arm. They both disappeared up the street. Only then did he drive away. I’ll kill them, thought Waltin.

  After Berg had followed Lisa to the subway he met his comrades. It was a meeting that they’d already planned during the Christmas holiday, and it was also then that they’d set up the tactics for how to find the traitor who had wormed his way into their ranks. They already had their suspicions, so now it was only a matter of setting the trap and seeing to it that it closed on the right man.

  Lisa’s a good girl, he thought. Really good lay too, and a jerk like that Waltin should just be killed. It was clearly enough to poke at him to make him shit in his pants, so it probably wouldn’t be all that difficult, thought Berg.

  At the meeting he “surprised” the assembly with a few well-prepared little semi-red viewpoints that he and the group had agreed on, and it was the very guy that they’d guessed in advance who started to carry on and go on the rampage. Damn overacting, thought Berg. We’ll get you soon. Then they had coffee and he only needed to exchange a glance with the comrades to know that they’d understood exactly the same thing he had. The traitor had worked like a beaver to ingratiate himself and provoke people to say wrong things, but of course that hadn’t gotten him anywhere.

  On the first day of the new job, Johansson noticed a newspaper clipping on the internal bulletin board next to the cloakroom. It was the annual New Year’s greeting from the Stockholm chief constable to his faithful personnel, which someone had clipped out of the Stockholm Police Department’s personnel newsletter, and to be on the safe side marked it, with the help of a felt pen, with a thick black frame.

  It was no ordinary New Year’s greeting, especially not within the police. True, he’d heard whispering for a long time about the chief constable’s literary ambitions, but he really hadn’t counted on this. People didn’t usually throw themselves headfirst out of their private closets when they’d finally made up their minds, thought Johansson, while he muttered his way through the poem’s seven short lines. One of them he happened to recognize from some other context, but he’d forgotten from where, and on the whole it was all the same.

  Black asphalt,

  shining neon,

  the stench of urine from the tile of the subway,

  in the station john a junkie dies of an overdose,

  Stockholm, city of cities,

  A dove pecks on the window ledge where I live,

  there is Hope!

  Under the chief constable’s poem someone had written with the same black felt pen, “Give me a real policeman from Ådalen,” and when Johansson saw the brief assertion something touched his Norrland heart. Nice to know you’re welcome.

  An unusual lot of poets around lately, he thought as he walked down the long corridor in the direction of his office. Prime ministers and police chiefs and God knows what. Perhaps you ought to write something yourself, he thought, but because that idea was so absurd he immediately dismissed it. A real policeman never wrote poems, and personally he’d already quit that kind of thing when he was a kid. Long before he became a policeman.

  Bureau Chief Berg used to think about Swedish defense as a cheese, an unusually hollow, large-holed cheese of the classic Swiss model, and the primary reason for this was the stable and resistant foundation of stone on which the nation rested, for in it you could make holes, and in holes you could put things. He was more hesitant about the hedgehog the military used to talk about, and when they sometimes pulled out the Swedish tiger from the days of the cold war he was definitely not with them anymore. A taciturn Swedish tiger? The very thought was preposterous, Berg used to think, because if the Swedes really had been taciturn there would be no need for people like him. Berg existed, for good reason, because certain people talked too much, and it wasn’t any more complicated than that.

  The hollow cheese was a better image than both the hedgehog and the tiger because it was there that all the necessities of war were stored, from coffee and underwear to fuel and grease, plus an artillery piece or two that must be on hand when you wanted to strike back. The good Swedish rock foundation was crisscrossed with mile after mile of secret passages and ten million square feet of secret spaces where everything that would be needed could be stored, just in case.

  The practical problems connected with this choice of strategy dealt in all essentials with the requirements for heat, ventilation, air humidity, and dehumidifying, and it was hardly by chance that Swedish industry was also the world leader in these technical areas. In Sweden there were thus two multinational corporations that produced and sold everything from fans and pumps to air-conditioning and dehumidifying installations, with customers over the whole world, regardless of whether their requirements were military or civilian.

  These products were sold on an open market and protected in the usual way through patents and licenses, and so far didn’t involve spies, but as soon as they were installed in military installations it became a completely different matter. For the materiel to be put into place and function demanded a thorough knowledge of the installations where they were to be placed, and based on this knowledge a number of interesting variables could then be calculated: site, size, and range of application, type of materiel, and quantity of various products and commodities, in order to codify those that concerned military capacity, strategic direction, and endurance. Depending on who the purchaser was, a banal, ordinary industrial fan might quickly be transformed into an espionage assignment of the first order.

  A good year and a half earlier, detectives in the secret police conducting routine surveillance of an official with the Soviet trade delegation had gotten wind of a previously unknown Swede who, after the customary checks, was shown to be working as a sales engineer at the smaller and faster growing of the two multinational Swedish companies in the business. When the alarm had been sounded Berg had been on vacation, the first real time off he’d had in several years, and it was Waltin who filled in for him. When Berg came back the case was already closed and evidently disappeared, for however Berg rooted in his memory, he couldn’t find the least trace of it.

  . . .

  “And you’re quite certain that it was in June of the summer before last,” asked Berg.

  “Quite sure,” said Persson. “Waltin took it over just as soon as it came in. It was the sixth of June, National Day, in fact. It was concluded less than a month later, the first of July.”

  “So what did he do?” said Berg. “Waltin, that is.” While Marja and I were in Austria, he thought.

  “Unclear,” said Persson. “The person involved quit rather abruptly, so the basic tip-off is that Waltin contacted the company executives. We don’t seem to have done anything here in the building, in any event.”

  “This sounds completely unreal,” said Berg. “Why in heaven’s name did he do that?”

  “Personally I can only think of one reason,” said Persson.

  “Yes?”

  “Their single largest export market is the United States. How do you think the Yanks would have reacted if they’d found out that the company was the object of an espionage inve
stigation? That concerned the Russians?”

  “But why on earth would Waltin do something like that?”

  “There’s only one reason,” said Persson, suddenly looking rather satisfied.

  “Yes?”

  Persson held up his large right hand with the back of his hand toward Berg and rubbed his thumb against his index and middle fingers.

  “Maybe he needed to buy a new watch,” Persson grunted contentedly.

  I don’t believe my ears, thought Berg.

  “We have to talk with him,” he said.

  They had the first weekly meeting of the new year the third week in January. None of the issues Berg chose to bring up were especially important or urgent. He did not touch on the prime minister’s personal security awareness in any way. Most likely because he was now beginning to resign himself to the thought of having to live with it as it was—that is to say, nonexistent, or at best insufficient.

  Kudo and Bülling as usual reported a great number of questions “of the utmost importance for the security of the realm” during the operations bureau’s preparation of those cases that he needed to take up with the government, but personally he’d been content to communicate to his political superiors that all appeared calm on the Kurdish front. Contrary to his habit, the minister of justice didn’t come up with any moronic follow-up questions, either, contenting himself with nodding in concurrence.

  Berg devoted most of the time to the ongoing survey of extreme right-wing elements within the police and military, but even there he was able to provide reassurance. According to the operations bureau’s informants, activities within these groups appeared, if anything, to have decreased, and the future would show whether that was due to the fact that they’d eaten too much Christmas food or to something else.

  Then final questions remained, and because that point traditionally was given over to a somewhat more lighthearted summing-up and give-and-take, it came as a total surprise when the minister of justice started asking questions about very sensitive command-and-control procedures in connection with the work of the secret police. As a breach of etiquette it was almost shocking, but etiquette was clearly the thing they were least interested in talking about.

  “I guess I’ll get right to the point,” said the minister of justice, who suddenly sounded like a completely different person than the one Berg had become accustomed to, “for unfortunately it is the case that this so-called external operation has concerned us a great deal.”

  Then the chief legal officer took over. The legal officer, of all people, who had hardly opened his mouth during all these years, thought Berg, and from the papers that he started to shuffle and from what he then said, Berg understood two things. That he of course was not one to speak unprepared, and that he must have a very large bone to pick with Berg and his operation.

  “To summarize,” said the legal officer with a crackling-dry voice and as though he were addressing a child, “the business-enterprise element of the external operation is not in accord with the instructions of the government. Quite apart from the entire construction, it must be considered utterly dubious as an instrument of control.”

  “When this came up the first time during the previous administration,” Berg objected, “I was of the distinct impression that they were completely in agreement with us that it was only a question of a cover in order to protect the actual operation. And as you gentlemen perhaps recall, we also briefed our parliamentary committee.”

  From their facial expressions Berg could tell that they didn’t share the previous administration’s understanding of the matter, and that none of them had any memory of any information from their time in opposition.

  “Because you’ve done business with both private and public clients, it is quite obviously a question of a business operation in the legal sense, and thereby inconsistent with your instructions,” the legal officer repeated.

  “Well,” said Berg, swearing to himself about how compliant he sounded, “but that’s of course in the very nature of the matter. How else would we be able to maintain a credible front?”

  “It sounds as if it’s high time to close up shop,” chuckled the prime minister’s special adviser behind his half-closed eyelids. “I have a vague recollection that you and I talked about this previously, by the way.”

  So that’s how it is, thought Berg.

  “It’s naturally regrettable that the previous administration’s attorneys didn’t pay attention to this little complication,” the legal adviser stated contentedly. “If you had asked me I would have been able to enlighten you on the fact that the entire arrangement was unthinkable from the start.”

  “Naturally we’re not demanding that you immediately close the whole thing down,” said the minister of justice amiably. “The control function naturally must remain, and we understand fully that you may need a certain transition period in order to find a … how shall I put it … a more correct legal form for the whole thing.”

  “By Monday would be good,” said the special adviser, laughing so that his fat belly bounced.

  “Oh well,” said the minister of justice sourly, because it was he who actually had a seat in the government, and he had the right to demand a little good manners even from the prime minister’s confidant. “You surely need a little longer, but if we might get your thoughts on how such an oversight should be set up by the next meeting or perhaps even the following meeting then I’ll be completely satisfied.” The minister of justice nodded affably.

  How generous of you, thought Berg. Not enough that I’m expected to cut off my right arm myself. I also have to decide where, when, and how it should be done. Provided that it goes quickly, of course.

  It was at that point that he decided to try a different angle of attack, and afterward he deeply regretted having done so. He ought to have understood better, he thought. This was something they must have prepared with all the precision required for a successful ambush.

  “I have heard it suggested,” Berg began hesitantly and carefully, “that the government is planning a new parliamentary oversight of the entire closed operation … and it would be far from me to have any opinions about that,” he continued just as carefully as he’d begun, “but am I to understand from what you are now saying that you have abandoned the idea of a more comprehensive inspection?”

  “Certainly not,” said the minister of justice, sounding just as jovial as if it was an ordinary present that was going to be given out. “Certainly not,” he repeated. “When we discussed the matter at the higher governmental level, we were only in agreement on the fact that it would be advantageous to deal with this question in particular before we set to work on the somewhat broader oversight.”

  “We don’t want to embarrass the opposition,” the special adviser clarified with his usual wry grin.

  “Not at any price, certainly not,” emphasized the minister with a cordial voice. “Let others score such crude political points.”

  So there’s no help to be had, thought Berg. Wonder how many they’ve talked with?

  “I will put together a proposal as quickly as is possible,” he said, nodding curtly. “If there’s nothing else, then …”

  He understood by their satisfied head shaking that they all thought he’d gotten as much as he could tolerate for one occasion.

  . . .

  Despite repeated attempts, Waltin hadn’t gotten hold of Hedberg. After the shocking attack he’d been subjected to by that fat red-haired stuffed sow and Berg’s deplorable nephew—actually he ought to report him, but justice would have to be tempered with mercy, and first he wanted to discuss the problem with Hedberg, who always used to have good ideas when it was a matter of retaliating with interest—he’d felt anxious and phoned Hedberg on his secret number far into the night. The phone had rung and rung, but no one had answered, and finally he’d gone to bed after a few stiff malt whiskeys.

  The explanation for Hedberg’s absence came in the mail the next morning. On the hallway mat
below the mail slot lay a single postcard: blue sky and blue sea, white sand and green palms. When he turned over the card and saw the only word written there he understood exactly: “Diving,” read Waltin, smiling. Hedberg was clearly at his favorite place, devoting himself to his favorite hobby, and just like all the times before he would soon return from Java to relative civilization and his little house on northern Mallorca, where he’d settled many years ago when he’d had enough both of his fatherland and of the secret police he’d worked for.

  Hedberg, thought Waltin, nodding with approval as he always did every time he thought about the brother that his constantly sick little mama had denied him, and when he did so this time he suddenly got a totally brilliant idea how he might use him to shut his deplorable and clearly paranoid boss up. For it was of course Berg who had supported Hedberg that time almost ten years ago when those lunatics at the Stockholm Police Department’s assault unit were after him like a pack of howling bloodhounds. We all have a history, and I’ll see to it that you don’t run away from this one, thought Waltin contentedly.

  It must have been almost ten years ago, thought Waltin. Those so-called detectives in Stockholm wanted to get Hedberg for a post-office robbery and two murders. The whole story was absolutely absurd and obviously quite worthy of police thinkers like that Norrland tramp Johansson and his violence-worshipping best friend, Jarnebring, who were the ones who’d let the pack loose.

  First Hedberg supposedly slipped away from a bodyguard assignment, where he was guarding the minister of justice while the latter was screwing a slightly more high-class prostitute to exhaustion, and took the opportunity to rob a post office not far from the security object’s love nest. Then he supposedly killed two witnesses who recognized him and wanted to extort money from him. True, he’d only run over the first one with his car, but the other one he’d killed in a rather more old-fashioned and honest way, dumping the body out at the Forest Cemetery. An ordinary old bum, so that was no doubt both pious and practical, but the peasant police had persisted anyway, even though it would have been best for all concerned just to bury the wretch and forget the whole thing. They were going to get Hedberg and that was that.