The Steel Spring

by Per Wahlöö

  ‘Was that all?’

  ‘Yes. And quite enough, too, as far as I’m concerned. Her behaviour was completely absurd.’

  ‘Perhaps not as strange as you think.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  Jensen did not reply. Instead he said:

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘To her?’

  ‘No, in general.’

  ‘Things got worse and worse. People were incredibly worked up. When we stopped holding our public meetings, they transferred their attentions to the embassies of the socialist countries. Mobs stormed one embassy and set fire to it. The police hardly bothered to intervene at all, even though they had guns by then. In the course of a few days, about ten residences and consulates closed and the staff were sent home.’

  ‘And what did you do?’

  ‘Nothing. Decided to wait and see. Then out of the blue came the announcement that the elections had been put off. That was on the twenty-first of October, less than a week before election day.’

  ‘How was the announcement made?’

  ‘In the papers and on TV and radio. A member of the government spoke. The Minister for Ecclesiastic Affairs, I think. He said very briefly that the elections had been cancelled until further notice and that people should revert to orderly behaviour. He urged everyone to stay calm. And at just the same time …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘At just the same time, all that official baiting of us socialists stopped. Nobody said or wrote anything about any event, past or present. It was as if it was all over. In actual fact it had only just started.’

  ‘What happened on the second of November?’

  ‘Something unimaginable.’

  The man suddenly clapped his hands over his eyes. It was a few minutes before he could go on.

  ‘It was announced on the Monday that the elections were being postponed. On the Saturday of that week, the police started detaining people. Lots of card-carrying socialists and their sympathisers were arrested and taken away. Some escaped. Two days later there was a new wave of arrests. That time we were better prepared and the police didn’t catch as many. Lots left the city. We three stayed on. We had a room in the basement for emergencies that not many people knew about, where we were safe even if the police raided the society premises. The next day there was a complete about-face. That minister appeared on TV and radio again and said there’d been a series of errors of judgement. He said the police had exceeded their legal powers and that the general public had misconstrued the situation.’

  ‘What else did he say?’

  ‘That the arrests were illegal and that everyone detained on political grounds would be released immediately. He stressed that he knew both the police’s and the public’s actions had been motivated by righteous national indignation, but that the methods used could not be tolerated.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘That all sounded very fishy, but the fact is, all those arrested by the police were released the same day. Friends of ours told us they’d all been shoved into enormous basement rooms in the new and as yet unfinished central detox unit. They’d been pretty much beaten up by the police and guards, and then suddenly they’d been let out.’

  The man still had his hands over his eyes. He spoke in a lifeless monotone.

  ‘The next day there were more government bulletins. This time there was no actual spokesperson. The announcements basically said that the country had a democratic constitution and that everyone had the right to express their political ideology without fear of reprisals. They said the election would be held in fourteen days’ time and that, as part of the final campaign phase, the Accord regime urged all socialists to take part in a mass meeting that Saturday, that is, the second of November. Military units would be called in to support the police in maintaining law and order. It was guaranteed that there would be no risk to life or limb. All socialist and radical left-wing organisations and societies were invited in writing. The venue named on the invitations was the city’s biggest sports stadium. Representatives of the government and all other interested groups of citizens would take part in a major political debate there. The boulevard that led to the stadium was assigned to the socialists as the approach route for their demonstration and march. The police and military would close it to all other traffic.’

  Jensen heard something and tried to interrupt to comment on it, but the man did not seem to notice.

  ‘By the Thursday evening, army units with tanks and helicopters were showing up in the city. Virtually all the socialist societies had accepted the terms of the meeting. We were working hard on our preparations, like everyone else. Some of our comrades from the rest of the country travelled in to take part. On the Friday everything was completely calm. That night we slept for just a few hours on mattresses in our club premises, me and my friend, his wife and a few others. She’d been getting weirder and weirder. I hadn’t been asleep for more than an hour when I was woken by …’

  Jensen was listening to the sound of an approaching motor engine. Even before the vehicle thundered through the arch, he knew it was the jeep. The man on the sofa seemed oblivious.

  ‘It doesn’t matter, anyway. The demonstrators began to assemble for the march around ten in the morning, and we set off down the avenue at the appointed time, on the dot of eleven. We had at least ten times as many marchers as on any previous rally, but then it was the first time all the societies and organisations were taking part. The pavements were packed with people, but nobody was booing or jeering. Between the onlookers and the march there were lines of soldiers and uniformed police in close formation. The only vehicles on the street were police cars and the military armoured cars. The marchers moved slowly forward. Some started singing. Otherwise it was quiet. It was a cold, grey day with a light drizzle. And then suddenly, when we were about halfway, they threw themselves at us.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘All of them. Soldiers and police and onlookers. They howled like wild animals and started shooting. For the first few seconds there was utter chaos. I thought they were shooting in the air to disperse the marchers or scare us. But it only took a moment for me to realise they were shooting to kill and we’d walked into a gigantic trap that the panicking government had set so it could get rid of us. There were people dying all around us. They were shot or had their heads smashed by rifle butts. Children were trampled to death. People who tried to run away stumbled in the pools of blood and were mown down by the police horses. It was total slaughter, inhuman chaos. The three of us kept close together. Somehow we managed to slip down a side street. As we were running we could hear the shooting and the cries for help behind us. When I glanced back over my shoulder I saw a helicopter come in low over the roofs. They were firing from it with a machine gun. We hid under a viaduct until it got dark. Then we sneaked back to our basement. The whole time there were police cars and ambulances wailing along the streets. The hideaway in the basement was our only chance. We stayed there. That was what happened on the second of November. The biggest massacre in world history. You asked me, and now I’ve told you.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘We just stayed there. I don’t know how many days. Then my friend’s wife got sick. She was delirious and said she was seeing everything through a red fog. She felt as if she was suffocating and kept trying to throw off her clothes. As she got worse and worse we realised she had to go to hospital. We drew lots for who was to help her get there, and it was me. We both helped her up to the street and then I carried her to the nearest emergency alarm point. It turned out to be evening. Down in the cellar we couldn’t tell if it was day or night. It took a long time for the ambulance to come. The driver didn’t want to take her. He said she had an infectious illness and would probably die. He told me to put her in the ambulance and come with her because I was doubtless infected, too, and had to be quarantined.’

  The man still had his hands over his eyes and was talking in the same monotone as before.
r />   ‘He was right, in that she died in the ambulance. When we got to the main hospital, they told him to take the body to the central detox unit. I, on the other hand, was taken in and put on a trolley in a corridor. They gave me some sort of injection that put me to sleep. When I woke up, two men in white coats were pushing the trolley along an endless, all-white underground corridor. One of them was very tall, the other very short. The tall one took huge strides. The little one had to run. I got the impression they were pushing the trolley very fast. They had a muttered conversation as they went along, and I could only make out the odd term, none of which made any sense. Once I saw their eyes, I realised they were insane.’

  ‘One moment,’ said Jensen.

  ‘They must have given me another injection. The next time I woke up I was lying on a blanket on the floor in a big ward. I had no legs. The whole ward was crammed with cripples like me. Some of them looked like monsters. Lots were dead. Those who were alive were whimpering and groaning. There was an unspeakable stench in the room. I heard someone say: “Hey, I know this one.” I saw a red-haired man bending over me. I knew who he was. He was a police doctor. Then I don’t remember anything until I woke up here and saw you.’

  The voice ceased abruptly. Its owner lay still with his hands covering his eyes.

  Jensen turned his head and saw the red-haired police doctor standing in the doorway with his right shoulder leaning on the doorpost.

  ‘Is this true?’

  The doctor raised a warning index finger, took out a needle and a plastic phial, slotted them together and went quickly over to the sofa.

  Jensen looked on in silence as the red-headed man injected the contents of the phial. The man on the sofa immediately relaxed and went limp.

  The doctor arranged the blankets and then turned to Jensen.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I asked if that was true or untrue.’

  ‘Well,’ said the doctor. ‘Yes and no.’

  ‘Which means what?’

  ‘That everything he told you did happen, but that he’s misinterpreting some of the facts.’

  CHAPTER 22

  Inspector Jensen sat at his desk in his office. He had just switched off the tape recorder. The red-haired police doctor was standing over by the window, looking out at the slushy snow.

  ‘True or untrue?’

  ‘True, but wrongly interpreted in parts.’

  ‘How much of it has he got wrong?’

  ‘A fair bit. Some things you’ll have realised yourself, of course, on the basis of what you already know.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You understand what the girl’s problem was, for example.’

  ‘Yes. She’d fallen victim to the epidemic.’

  ‘The illness. And since he doesn’t know that her reactions were symptoms of that illness, he finds them incomprehensible.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So the interesting thing isn’t her behaviour in itself, or the fact that she died in the same way as the woman down in the cells. The essential question is how she got the illness.’

  ‘And can you answer that question?’ said Jensen.

  ‘No. Unfortunately. Not yet. Did you find out what that name meant? The Steel Spring?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s another of the questions remaining to be answered.’

  The police doctor turned round.

  ‘Analogous to the story about the woman, there’s another detail I can correct. That’s to say, what happened in practice during the massacre of the second of November. I’ve got a pretty clear picture of what happened.’

  ‘Is the witness’s account inaccurate?’

  ‘No. He told you exactly what he saw and heard. But the conclusions he draws aren’t correct.’

  ‘Aren’t they?’

  ‘No. No. He perceived it all as an ambush and organised human slaughter. A death trap that he and two others had just happened to slink out of.’

  ‘Wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, from his perspective. But that’s inevitably subjective. In actual fact there were a great many demonstrators on the march sensible and quick-witted enough to get themselves to safety. And most of those didn’t hide away in basements, cowering there until the police patrols tracked them down. No, they got away from here as fast as they could, to instigate countermeasures.’

  ‘Away from here?’

  ‘Yes, out in the country. In the forest.’

  ‘Like you.’

  ‘Like me. What’s more, the attack wasn’t anything like as well planned and executed as he thought it was. As far as we’ve been able to reconstruct the sequence of events, the police, military and groups of civilians attacked in a totally disorganised fashion. In their eagerness to get at the demonstrators, the police and soldiers were shooting each other and bystanders who weren’t even involved. The automatic fire from the helicopters, for example, was completely indiscriminate and didn’t have that much impact on our people, since the marchers had already scattered by then and were running off in different directions. Admittedly a lot of people were killed in all the confusion, but not as many as he thinks. And the deaths were more or less equally divided between the demonstrators, their attackers, and the mass of still indifferent people who unwittingly made up the third party. That’s not to say I’m claiming the massacre wasn’t planned. I’m sure it was.’

  ‘But hardly by the government,’ said Jensen.

  ‘Ah, you’ve realised that much.’

  ‘But it was planned, nonetheless. By whom?’

  ‘I should think that’s one of the questions the people who sent you here are rather desperate to have answered.’

  Silence descended on the room. The doctor looked out of the window again. He didn’t move a muscle, and seemed to be waiting for something he knew would be happening very soon.

  ‘You seem calm,’ said Jensen.

  ‘Yes, there’s no great hurry any more. The damage is already done, so to speak.’

  He checked the time.

  ‘Perhaps I ought to check the contact,’ he muttered to himself.

  He turned to Jensen and said:

  ‘Come with me.’

  They went to the radio control room. The police doctor connected up the receiving equipment and spent some time adjusting switches and dials. After a while he said:

  ‘Evidently it’s not quite time yet.’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  The man didn’t reply. Instead he tuned in to another wavelength. A few seconds later the familiar, indolent female voice could be heard.

  ‘Come in vehicle fifty. Vehicle fifty, do you read me? Calling all vehicles, do you read me?’ Her next comment appeared to be to someone beside her.

  ‘They’re not answering any more.’

  ‘No. And they never will,’ muttered the police doctor.

  He turned off the switch.

  ‘Better save the batteries,’ he said. They left the radio control room. The invalid on the sofa was still unconscious.

  When they got to his office, Jensen said:

  ‘I’m going to ask you to answer a few questions.’

  ‘No point,’ said the police doctor, taking a seat in the visitor’s chair.

  ‘I shall ask anyway. People generally answer when I ask.’

  ‘You misunderstand me. I mean there’s no point as long as neither of us knows the answer to the crucial question. What’s the Steel Spring?’

  He stopped speaking and looked pensively at Jensen.

  ‘I know someone who can tell you all you need to know.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The one who sent you here.’

  ‘His Excellency?’

  ‘No, he’s a mere figurehead, for use on the election posters.’

  ‘The minister?’

  ‘Just so. He knows a good deal we don’t. On the other hand, we know a thing or two that he’s no idea about.’

  He reflected a while longer. Finally he asked:

 
; ‘Do you think you could trick him into coming here?’

  ‘It would be hard.’

  ‘There is another way.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Force,’ the red-haired man said tersely.

  He stood up and walked briskly back to the radio control room. Jensen did not follow him.

  CHAPTER 23

  ‘I don’t like you, Jensen,’ said the police doctor. Inspector Jensen did not respond.

  ‘Nothing personal. I don’t like you because you’re a policeman.’

  They were next to each other in the front seats of the patrol car. Jensen had the sirens on and was driving very fast through the deserted business district of the city centre.

  ‘You’ll be able to go at this speed all the way,’ said the police doctor. ‘All the roadblocks have been dismantled now. Think you can get to the airport in ninety minutes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then we ought to get there just about the time our friend’s plane lands.’

  ‘Are you sure he’s coming?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How did you manage that?’

  ‘Easy. He was as pleased as he was surprised to see a fighter plane from his own bloody air force landing at the airport. And when he heard you were on board, he was even happier. So then the guys heaved him into the cabin and took off again. I’m sure that was the method they used to recommend for getting a woman you wanted, back in the old days. Persuasion, cunning and – as a last resort – force. A sort of escalation.’

  Jensen passed the Royal Palace on one side and the Ministry of Communication on the other. He drove by the coalition parties’ central offices, and the Ministry of the Interior.

  ‘All the answers are in there,’ said the man with the red hair. ‘But it’s quicker this way.’

  The vast buildings looked grotesque and oversized in the cold, grey afternoon light. Jensen drove down into the tunnel leading south.

  ‘The police do have to exist, of course, but your form of police has always been a willing tool of capitalism and the plutocratic ruling classes. The police are too indoctrinated by those ideas to be open to reform. It’s the same with the military. Even a socialist society needs police and armed forces, however. Socialist police and socialist armed forces, to be more precise. And that’s why the old organisations need to be eradicated and replaced with new ones. So that’s why I don’t like you. On principle.’