Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End

by Leif Gw Persson

  “Excuse me if I appear tedious,” said the special adviser, “but you yourself are still convinced that he was murdered.”

  “Yes,” said Johansson. “He was murdered all right.”

  Not my department anymore, he thought a quarter of an hour later as he stepped out into the winter sun outside Rosenbad, and the relief he felt was noticeable even in the weather. What if I were to call up Jarnebring? Go out and eat a little and ask what they want for a wedding present. If she’ll let her new fiancé out, of course, and for some reason he’d also started thinking about that dark woman he’d met at that little post office up on Körsbärsvägen just two months ago. I really ought to look her up, he thought. Now that I’m a free man.

  As soon as he’d said that about Fionn, the special adviser had excused himself and gone out to his secretary and called Forselius on her telephone, and unexpectedly enough he had answered at once and sounded completely sober, despite the fact that it was already late morning.

  “Who is Fionn?” asked the special adviser.

  “Fionn, Fionn,” teased Forselius. “Why are you asking, young man? That was long before your time.”

  “Please excuse me,” said the special adviser, “but we’ll have to discuss that later.”

  “Fionn, alias John C. Buchanan,” said Forselius.

  “Buchanan was Fionn,” said the special adviser in order to avoid misunderstanding.

  “Fionn was Buchanan’s code name, one of them,” said Forselius, “and the only reason that I’m saying it on the telephone is that he’s dead. Not because it’s you who is asking.”

  “Thanks for the help,” said the special adviser.

  “Thus I would never dream of saying what your boss had as a code name,” Forselius droned contentedly. “Regardless of what I think about him.”

  “We’ll discuss that later,” said the special adviser.

  As soon as the peculiar Norrlander left, he said to his secretary that he didn’t want to be disturbed for a couple of hours, and then to be on the safe side he locked himself in, in the event that his boss might nonetheless come rushing in as he had a habit of doing when he wanted to talk about something important or just socialize in the most general way.

  With the help of the memorandum he’d received, his own reading habits, and the mental capacity that a generous creator had given him when he must have been in an especially good mood, it only took him a couple of hours to go through the papers he’d received. Wonder how long it took him, he thought, leafing through Johansson’s memorandum, which in itself was quite uninteresting since his own problem was a different one: that he couldn’t arrive at even a marginal objection to what was there. Berg was right about that business with the corners, he thought. So it was only to be hoped that he was also right about his being taciturn, he thought.

  I have to think, the special adviser decided, and then I’ll have to see what I should do. As things were now, there was only one thing he knew for certain. Regardless of everything else, he certainly wouldn’t say anything to his boss. What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him, he thought, and factored into this was an awareness that he now knew things about his boss that he had never known for certain before. He’d sensed it, figured out how it probably must be, which was not so strange considering his own background and Forselius’s habits with alcohol and all his more loose-lipped confidences, but at the same time he had no reason to believe that his boss suspected that he knew anything. And it has to stay that way, he thought. Out of pure concern for him, he thought, for he would prefer not to think about himself.

  . . .

  The secret police operative had not only killed Krassner. In order to arrange a credible suicide in the way that he’d chosen, he must have gone through Krassner’s papers and taken with him anything that might in the least jeopardize the credibility of Krassner’s suicide note. Probably it was as simple as that, thought the special adviser, that he’d come across a largely finished manuscript. What Johansson had received by unclear means plus the parts that Krassner had written during his time in Sweden, which hopefully were not as scandalous as what his uncle had supplied him with.

  At the same time it didn’t appear particularly believable that Krassner had any documentation with him of the type that Johansson had gotten hold of. For one thing it wasn’t required for the work he was doing in Sweden; for another he appeared careful to the point of paranoia, so his basic source material was certainly not something he was dragging around. Probably a largely finished manuscript—true, à la Krassner bad enough—but probably no documentation, the special adviser concluded.

  The documentation Johansson had received was mostly copies, but the simple explanation for that was that Buchanan probably hadn’t had anything else to give to his nephew. The few original documents were those that had been sent directly to Buchanan and that he, quite certainly against his instructions, had chosen to retain. The probable conclusion was that Buchanan’s employer, the CIA, was sitting on the originals of at least the majority of the documents Buchanan had copied, certainly also counter to his instructions, and then turned over to his nephew.

  In some mysterious way that Johansson hadn’t wanted to go into, which he himself had avoided asking about, and which he hadn’t succeeded in figuring out, the same papers had after Krassner’s death ended up in the hands of Johansson, who had chosen to turn them over to him. So that he in turn could give them to his boss? On that point Johansson had not been especially clear, much less insistent, so it was probably as simple as he’d said. He had just wanted to be rid of them, and that also spoke strongly against the fact that he himself would have copied the files. It also appeared highly improbable that he could be sitting on any more originals. Not least considering the antique appearance of the document copies and that he’d actually turned over originals originally emanating from the prime minister himself.

  You shouldn’t complicate matters unnecessarily, thought the special adviser, who’d had William of Occam as one of his philosophical favorites ever since he was in grade school. So forget Johansson, he thought. He could probably also forget the CIA. There were papers in one of their archives but this by no means meant that they had any active knowledge of the prime minister’s doings almost forty years ago. Tricky, thought the special adviser, they might know something but they don’t necessarily have to.

  On the other hand, if they did know something, things got simpler. Considering the security situation in northern Europe, they must be hoping Buchanan’s spiritual inheritance didn’t become public knowledge. Perhaps during the days of the conflict in Vietnam, and in the inflammatory conditions that then prevailed, but hardly now when the wounded relations between Sweden and the United States had been allowed to heal for many years and even the scars had started to fade. Then they had themselves to think about as well. You weren’t allowed to do what Buchanan had done, never mind how incensed you might become at a former agent. Bad for business, thought the special adviser.

  The problems you have are here at home, thought the special adviser, and the operative who was the cause of it all was probably the person he needed to be least concerned about. Krassner’s so-called suicide note was hardly something the operative had an interest in reading about in the newspaper. Then Johansson need not be the only one to figure out what had actually happened, and Krassner’s murder was actually almost the whole point.

  If you started swinging that scythe, then the murderer would not be the only one to wind up in the rake. He would have company all the way up, but while he himself and Berg and Waltin, and possibly others that he didn’t know, would only be forced to leave their jobs and be ass-whipped in the media in the usual way, the murderer would go to prison on a life sentence, and even though the drop in social status was relative, that could hardly be what he was hoping for. On the contrary, the suicide that he had so dexterously and cold-bloodedly arranged indicated that he absolutely did not want to get caught and that he had a considerable capacity to avoid d
oing so.

  His dear boss would naturally have to go, despite the fact that he had no idea either of Krassner’s existence or that his youthful convictions were threatening to catch up with him. For once that happened, his ignorance would be almost worse than his active involvement. The political ripple effect would of course be considerable, and the nation, the party, and the opposition would certainly be able to contain their laughter. Certain people would of course be greatly amused, but it was always that way.

  We’ll take that up later, for it doesn’t need to get that bad, thought the special adviser, and he returned to Berg and Waltin. It was these two lightweights who had initiated, carried out, and been responsible for this entire extraordinarily poorly managed affair. Did they know anything about what had actually happened? Probably not, thought the special adviser. He was almost certain that Berg didn’t know anything. True, he’d never met Waltin, but if Forselius’s description was correct he hardly appeared to be the most assiduous laborer in the security vineyard. They probably neither know nor suspect anything, thought the special adviser. And if they do, they ought to have a strong and natural interest in keeping quiet about it. Out of pure instinct for self-preservation.

  Provided that no one started giving them a bad time, of course, and drove them into a corner so that they stopped behaving rationally and instead started striking wildly around themselves. We actually have a little problem here, thought the special adviser, because it was he who had been the main driving force behind the secret political agreement to close down or in any case recast the so-called external operation, and as if in passing teach Berg and his coworkers to behave themselves by darkening their lives with yet another parliamentary investigation of the secret police. Good thing Johansson showed up in time, thought the special adviser, feeling almost a little energized at the thought of how he would have to convince those around him of the importance of making a complete reversal.

  Forselius, he thought. What do I do with him? And considering what he now knew, he already regretted that he’d called him and asked that question about who Fionn was. True, the old man was almost eighty and drank like a fish, but there was nothing really wrong with his head. Perhaps I ought to invite him to dinner, thought the special adviser; in the worst case I can always poison his food.

  The special adviser had devoted days, months, and years of his life to thinking about how one might politically defuse the security politics that Sweden had carried on in secrecy during the years after the end of the Second World War. He and Forselius had even arranged seminars where this was analyzed and discussed. Those invited had been few in number—at the most there had been seven people around the table—and everyone who came had to sign the usual confidentiality agreement.

  Obviously these were only the sort of people who already knew how things stood, so you avoided wasting time on that question. At the same time there were hundreds of people who knew. Politicians and military people naturally made up the largest group, but there were also historians, journalists, and corporate executives who had acquired knowledge of the matter in various ways, as well as the usual small number of thinking people who on their own steam had figured out how things were. Of course you couldn’t invite all of these people in—that was contrary to the mission and would have been both counterproductive and dysfunctional—but because the special adviser and Forselius only wanted to meet the sort of people who had something essential to say, and obviously according to their own way of viewing the matter, the number called in had not caused any problems whatsoever.

  As far as Sweden was concerned, in a political-security sense the years after the end of the Second World War might best be compared with a long walk on ice that has formed overnight. What would the great neighbor in the east think up? At its heart was an almost four-hundred-year history of constant wars with and political opposition to the Russian archenemy. A country then led by Joseph Stalin and that in a geopolitical sense had never before stood so close to Swedish territory. The Russians were in Finland, in the Baltic states, in Poland, in Germany, even on the Danish islands in the Baltic Sea. Wherever you turned you only saw the Russian bear with his mighty paws, ready to deliver the final embrace.

  Which way could they go? If it was a matter of flight, there was only a wounded Norway to make for, but considering how the Scandinavian peninsula looked, the only advantage of Norway was that in such a case it was a very short sprint. There was no question of throwing themselves into the arms of the West, either. First, the West wasn’t interested—they had more important things to work on—and the Swedes’ cooperation with the Nazis was well remembered by far too many people. Second, the Russians would naturally never allow such a thing and wouldn’t even need to declare war in order to make clear to the Western powers why that wouldn’t work. The West had already figured that out on its own, and considerably greater values than Swedish neutrality were at stake on the European continent. And just see how things had gone for the Poles, despite the fact that they’d allied themselves with both England and France even before the war.

  The idea of a Nordic defense alliance also had to be abandoned early on, and since neither the Norwegians nor the Danes were anything to count on in a pinch, one could live with the fact that it never came to be. In that case the Finns were better, both historically and in other ways, but the Russians had already made sure of them. In such a situation only political double-dealing remained: Wave the placard of “strict Swedish neutrality” amiably toward the Russians—until your arms went numb, if necessary—and at the same time play under the covers with the American military. Take in all the help you can without being discovered. For what choice did you really have?

  By and by conditions in Europe had started to normalize. The new borders that had been drawn on the map started to solidify in people’s awareness. The two large power blocs had put themselves in balance. People out in Europe started believing in peace and becoming reconciled to all the new things that were the prerequisites for peace. Both Stalin and Beria were dead, and say what you will about those who replaced them, it no longer seemed completely obvious that the Russian leaders started the day with a breakfast of small children.

  In the world of rationally managed politics there was no room for any feelings, and as soon as the pressure from the East had started to lessen, it came time to slacken the ties to the West in order to gradually cut the most critical lines. And bit by bit Sweden had started to execute the policy of neutrality to which it had given not much more than lip service in the previous ten years. If the date for the prime minister’s farewell letter to Buchanan, April 1955, had been a coincidence determined by his personal situation—you could get that impression when you read it—it was in any event a timely coincidence. Talk that the policy being conducted should also have been “strict” was of course pure nonsense intended for the audience in the sixth row. No rational politician let himself be directed by emotions, but only pure lunatics tried to be strict.

  In the mid-1950s it was high time to set up a new game plan. Swedish society had been Americanized at a brisk pace and in a confidence-inspiring way for the Americans. A country where the youth drank Coca-Cola, listened to Elvis, and had their first sexual experiences in the vinyl backseat of a Chevy convertible from Detroit was necessarily a good country. And from the Swedish side, of course, there was nothing to fear. The United States was at a secure distance geographically, and not even the Communist Party leader Hilding Hagberg believed in all seriousness that there was any risk of being attacked from that direction. That was just something he said when he went to Moscow to bring home his periodic support payments: that the Swedish military intelligence service let him be supported year after year was quite simply due to the fact that it served Sweden’s security and political stability on the Scandinavian peninsula.

  All that was thirty years ago, and because the special adviser lived and worked in the present, it wasn’t history that was his problem. The constant postwar cheating unde
r the cover of the wet wool blanket of neutrality was a given fact, and for him it was a matter of how the country would be able to free itself from that history without jeopardizing the policy of neutrality, which with every day that passed became an ever better and cheaper alternative.

  This was the problem that his and Forselius’s seminars had dealt with exclusively. The other thing was already known, so why waste time on it? Instead they had devoted all of their power to trying to propound the required conditions so that the policy that had actually been conducted during the postwar period could be openly discussed. Not with the aim of any higher measure of historical or political insight within the population—on the contrary, they were grateful that interest had decreased with the passing years—but rather because there were simply still very strong political and security reasons to do so.

  Despite the fact that the secret Swedish military and political cooperation with the United States and the other Western powers was thirty years old, and that in all essentials it had ceased twenty years ago, it still had considerable political explosive force. Describing the Russian bear as more and more moth-eaten was one thing. It wasn’t true, however, for his paws had never been more powerful than now; the fact that certain small teddy bears in his own winter lair had started talking back and nosing longingly in a westerly direction as soon as the wind was right only made him even more irritable.

  Liberalization in the Soviet Union, the increasingly open opposition, the clearer signs of a faltering economy, had more and more often given the special adviser sleepless nights. As a thinker and strategist, given the choice between a stable dictatorship and one in democratic transformation, he obviously preferred the former because then the problems were much easier to calculate and solve. What the people who lived there thought and felt about the matter left him cold. It would be best for him if they didn’t think at all. And best for them if they assigned him and people like him to think for them.