Another Time, Another Life: The Story of a Crime

by Leif Gw Persson

  “According to the Stasi, it was these four who had helped the terrorists at the embassy,” stated Berg. “But how they knew is mere speculation, and as I’m sure you already know I have a somewhat more nuanced view of the issue.”

  “Welander and Eriksson, to some degree Tischler, but in any case not Stein,” said Johansson.

  “Just about,” Berg agreed. “Two who were active, one who was unwitting, and one who was exploited.”

  It only began to get really interesting when Berg compared corresponding information from the SIRA archive he came across a few years later. If the information in Rosewood was assumed to be reliable—and according to Berg there wasn’t the slightest room for doubt on that point—these four should also be found in the SIRA archive, in the best case with an accompanying description of what their efforts had actually consisted of. It was highly interesting, not least to Berg because it gave him a convenient opportunity to assess his own analytical acumen in retrospect.

  “You’ve surely figured out the answer already,” said Berg, looking at Johansson.

  “None of them were there,” said Johansson. Easy as pie, he thought.

  “Exactly,” said Berg, nodding. “None of them was there. Not a comma about any of them, and that was pretty strange, because there were a number of reasons, beyond what had happened at the West German embassy, that at least Welander’s name should have been there. Eriksson’s too for that matter. When my predecessors recruited him, they made a serious mistake.”

  Oh well, thought Johansson. It’s probably not Eriksson and his recruitment that’s eating you up inside.

  To put it briefly, SIRA was not to be relied on, and someone who had contributed to that circumstance was the now deceased doctor of philosophy and associate professor of sociology at the University of Stockholm, later an employee at Swedish Television, Sten Welander. And in all probability his best friend from childhood, the banker Theo Tischler, had given him the money he needed to carry out the necessary erasures in the original database of the SIRA archive.

  “Perhaps you’ll have some coffee after all?” said Berg, looking inquiringly at Johansson. “This is not a bad story, but it does take awhile to tell it.”

  “Yes,” said Johansson. “Maybe it’s time for a cup.” Although a Danish is probably out of the question, he thought.

  XI

  On Friday the eighth of December 1989, Sten Welander traveled to East Berlin, together with a photographer and a colleague from Swedish Television, to do a feature story on the immediate consequences of the East German collapse and the fall of the Wall. This was an idea that had been in the works throughout that autumn and pursuing the story would have been extremely timely on the evening of the ninth of November. There had been a number of meetings, considerable bickering had broken out on the editorial staff, and several younger colleagues—of which Welander was only one—had felt called to immediately go to East Berlin.

  The fact that Welander was finally the one sent off on the first round was owing to his being able to present a proposal for a very specific, and, in terms of content, sensational and disturbing program on the East German security service, the Stasi, which until then had held the population of East Germany in an iron grip. According to Welander, the Stasi had files on millions of East German citizens, had persecuted hundreds of thousands of them, had locked up tens of thousands in prisons and mental hospitals, and, with the utmost secrecy, had had hundreds executed. In addition, Welander had evidently developed contacts with dissidents and persecuted East Germans who could testify to their misery and—as icing on the cake—people from the Stasi who had already promised to come forward and let themselves be interviewed. In brief, the proposed coverage was almost too good to be true.

  In the wake of management’s consent and the curses of some of his colleagues, Welander and his little team got on the plane and flew to Berlin. What they didn’t know was that on the same plane were people from both SePo and the Swedish military intelligence service, or that for the past twenty-four hours SePo had been listening in on his and Tischler’s home phones, and that people had even been assigned to shadow Tischler on his ever more restless walks between his apartment on Strandvägen, the office down on Nybroplan, and the central city’s finer restaurants.

  When Welander arrived in Berlin, he immediately snuck out of the hotel and met his Stasi contact at a nearby beer hall in West Berlin, a captain by the name of Dietmar Rühl who had never been involved with operational activities, since his area was administrative issues and personnel matters. The surveillance of Welander and the contacts he made had been taken over by the local division of the West German secret police as soon as they landed, and as a friendly gesture their Swedish colleagues had been allowed to follow along.

  Welander and his East German Stasi contact appeared noticeably stressed, almost harried, and from time to time they acted as though they were playing in some old spy film from the days of the cold war. They sat with their heads close together at the back of the place and palavered for more than an hour before they got up, shook hands, and left a few minutes apart. Rühl was seen to be carrying a thick brown envelope, contents unknown, and walked quickly back to East Berlin. A relieved Welander snuck back to his hotel. The whole meeting was well documented with photos taken by BKA’s counterespionage department.

  During the next few days Welander met with Rühl a few more times in East Berlin. Welander seemed to have more or less foisted the TV reporting onto his two colleagues. On the third evening a shouting match erupted between him and the other two in the photographer’s hotel room, whereupon Welander excused himself by saying that his contact at the Stasi had demanded to meet him alone, a necessary condition for his cooperation. The editorial discord that broke out at the hotel was of course recorded on BKA’s surveillance tape.

  During the next two days the hatchet got buried. The photographer and Welander’s colleague interviewed happy East Germans who willingly let themselves be filmed while they cursed at more or less everyone who had previously cast a pall over their lives—from Erich Honecker and his Stasi to the concierge in the building where they lived, who was “ein Arschloch und Polizeispion,” to the next-door neighbor who was an ordinary “Polizistenschwein und Petze.” In brief, things went well for Welander’s colleagues.

  For Welander himself, on the other hand, life appeared more problematic. After five days an inebriated Theo Tischler called Welander’s hotel room in Berlin in the middle of the night from his apartment on Strandvägen in Stockholm. There was a brief conversation, taped, of course, by both SePo and BKA. SePo’s transcript read as follows.

  TT: How the hell are things going for you guys? Do you need more ammo or what? Hello …

  SW: You must have the wrong number.

  TT: Hello? Hellooo … What the hell … Don’t hang up now.… (The conversation ends.)

  After a little more than a week, the feature story was pretty much done. Or at least the photographer and Welander’s colleague felt they had done their part and could do no more. What remained was the promised interview with Welander’s secret contact at the Stasi. A noticeably stressed Welander managed to negotiate an additional twenty-four hours from his team members, and on Sunday the sixteenth of December the interview finally took place. An almost exhilarated Dietmar Rühl showed up at the agreed-upon meeting place in West Berlin.

  First he spoke alone with Welander, who appeared considerably happier after their meeting, and then the interview was conducted. With his back toward the camera, and his voice rendered mechanically distorted, “the secret Stasi agent and major Wolfgang S.”—which is how the secret contact was introduced in the program—in a monotone tried to avoid answering Welander’s questions and assertions about various atrocities that his employer was supposed to be guilty of. The interview took an hour, Wolfgang S. received the agreed-upon compensation of fifteen hundred deutschmarks in advance, and that very same evening Welander and his team packed up and went home to Sweden.
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br />   That night a highly intoxicated Welander phoned Tischler from his apartment in Täby and said that he was feeling fine, that it was lovely to be home again, that his reporting trip had been a complete success, that he hoped he and Tischler would be able to meet soon and have a bite to eat, since it was almost Christmas … and … Whereupon Tischler had slammed down the receiver.

  Welander’s feature story ran without much notice. Most of their competitors had already purchased, and broadcast, considerably more substantive stories than the material Sten Welander could offer the viewers of public television in the middle of January. Welander’s bosses were annoyed. What he had delivered had little in common with the promises he had laid out in his proposal. For some reason those colleagues whose suggestions had been rejected in favor of Welander’s were the happiest.

  Another person who seemed to have reason to feel content was Welander’s contact in the Stasi, who quickly made the transition to capitalist society. Dietmar Rühl, the former Stasi captain, did not have to check tickets in the subway or stand in the coat check at the German Historical Museum. In a relatively short time he acquired three different stores in the former East Berlin selling pornography and sex accessories. According to reports business was booming.

  Despite the lackluster reviews, Welander and even Tischler appeared both satisfied and much calmer. After a month SePo withdrew its surveillance of them and ended the audio surveillance on their phones. Because they already had a definite idea of what had happened, and because there was no intention of taking measures against any of them, the whole thing was put to rest. In hindsight Welander might just as well have stayed home. What he did not know was that the Americans had already confirmed the interesting information and none of them even gave Welander and his comrades a thought.

  “Do you have any idea what Tischler had to pay to get their names removed from SIRA?” asked Johansson, who knew how to look out for himself where money was concerned.

  “No idea,” said Berg, shaking his head. “A few hundred thousand kronor if you ask me. Certainly no more than that. The rates for such things had already started to tumble. Whatever it was, it seems to have been enough for Rühl to be able to establish himself in a new business,” Berg stated with a hint of a smile.

  “How did you get wind of Welander’s little excursion to Berlin?” asked Johansson.

  “Ahh,” said Berg contentedly, looking almost as if he were tasting a fine wine. “If you only knew how many informants we’ve had at Swedish Radio and Television all these years … not to mention the newspapers,” he said. “It will be interesting to see if our dear intelligence service commission dares let the veil drop when they account for this aspect of their noble mission in the service of truth.”

  “So types like Welander are still in our files,” Johansson asserted.

  “What else did you expect?” said Berg, sounding almost a little resentful. “That would be the last thing I would attempt … withholding such information and thus hindering the remaining part of the fourth estate in their important journalistic mission.” Although I don’t expect I’ll live to see the day, he thought, and suddenly he felt rather lousy.

  XII

  Only one question remained for Johansson.

  “There’s one more thing I was wondering about,” he said.

  Berg just nodded. He suddenly looked rather tired, and for the first time during their conversation Johansson felt sympathy for him. I need to stop, he thought. The man must have more important things to deal with than sitting here and answering my nagging questions.

  “I’ll buy your reasons for having cleaned them out of the files two years ago. Besides, the only two who were interesting were dead. But what I don’t really understand …” Johansson hesitated. Should I just forget about it? he wondered.

  “Go ahead and ask,” said Berg. “I promise I’ll answer if I can.”

  “What I don’t really understand is why you restored the information on Welander and Eriksson to the files on the West German embassy only a few months ago,” Johansson concluded. At the same time you retired and promised me a clean desk, he thought.

  “I honestly admit that I was hesitant,” said Berg, nodding. “But it was our colleagues in military intelligence who called and tipped me off. Besides, they let it be known that more might be coming on the same subject … so I thought it over again and put them back in.”

  “What was your line of reasoning?” asked Johansson.

  There were pros and cons, and Berg had spent a long time deciding. For one thing, it was actually true: Both Eriksson and Welander had been up to their necks in the embassy occupation. Second, if some sufficiently qualified and careful inspector from the security service commission sat down with the material about the West German embassy, he or she might discover rather quickly that names had been removed from the material. Third, and most important, it was conceivable that new material might be added that he would no longer have any control over for the simple reason that he had retired. Fourth, and finally, he saw the openness in communication as an expression of a changed, more positive attitude on the part of their military intelligence colleagues.

  “I don’t know how many times we’ve quarreled about this over the years,” said Berg. “I didn’t think I should just show them the door when at last they’d come knocking, regardless of what they had on offer. Besides, the people this concerned were dead anyway, and because Welander himself had been a journalist, the wolf pack ought to leave his remains in peace. As far as Eriksson is concerned, if I remember correctly he had no surviving family when he died. And then the military intelligence colleagues suggested that more might be coming, and that sort of thing is always hard to say no to.”

  “You don’t think that’s what this was really about then?” asked Johansson.

  “What do you mean?” asked Berg.

  “About information that might possibly come later,” said Johansson.

  “You mean they wanted to open a doorway through which they might deliver someone other than Welander and Eriksson,” said Berg.

  “Yes,” said Johansson. Like Stein, for example, he thought.

  “The idea has certainly occurred to me, and I know who you’re thinking of,” said Berg, smiling weakly. “No,” he added, shaking his head to underscore what he said. “The information actually came from our own military intelligence service, and in the prevailing security climate I have a hard time believing they would conspire against their own undersecretary. I have a hard time seeing the motive, quite simply.”

  So you have a hard time believing it, thought Johansson, but of course he didn’t say that. Instead he asked about something else, interesting in itself, related but at the same time far enough away if, like him, you preferred not to waken the bear that had gone into retirement, and would be dead soon anyway.

  • • •

  “According to one of my coworkers, the guy at the terrorist squad who received the tip got the impression that it came from the Germans and the SIRA archive,” said Johansson. “But that can’t be what happened, if I’m to believe you, since Welander had already made sure that he and his comrades were cleaned out of that archive in December 1989.”

  “Yes, he must have had that all turned around. Personally I’m convinced that the military must have gotten the information from the Americans, and that it derives from Rosewood. There’s just no other possibility.”

  “What I still don’t understand is why anyone took the trouble,” said Johansson. “Why in the name of heaven does someone tip us off about a matter almost twenty-five years old? About two individuals who are already dead and a preliminary investigation that will be null and void in six months?” What interest could the American intelligence service have in that? he thought, but of course he didn’t say it.

  “As I just said, I’ve wondered about that, too,” said Berg. “I have no idea, actually, but it’s definitely a bit strange.”

  “The only explanation, as I see it, is that th
ey’re trying to build a doorway,” Johansson persisted. And that it’s about Stein, he thought.

  “And that’s where we don’t agree,” said Berg, smiling weakly.

  Not if I’m to believe what you’re saying, thought Johansson.

  “Just one more thing,” said Johansson, looking at his watch. “Eriksson’s murder … do you have any idea who might have been behind that?”

  “Not the faintest,” said Berg, “and to be honest I’ve really been trying not to get involved in what our colleagues in the open operation are up to. I’ve tried to take care of my business and let them take care of theirs, regardless of how good they’ve been at it. But since you’re asking, if only a fraction of what I’ve heard about Eriksson in connection with our operation is true, then the only mystery is why no one killed him sooner. The man seems to have been an exceptional little jerk. There must have been lots of people with different reasons for wanting to get him out of the way. But that it had anything to do with the West German embassy”—Berg shook his head—“that thought has actually never occurred to me.”

  “So you don’t think his old comrades, Welander or Tischler, may have had anything to do with it?” asked Johansson, who did not seem to have heard what Berg had just said.

  “I remember I discussed it with Persson when he was looking at the murder investigation on our behalf, and he was convinced that neither of them could have done it,” said Berg.

  “Did anything about Eriksson emerge in connection with the surveillance of Welander and Tischler in December 1989?” asked Johansson.

  “No,” said Berg. “He wasn’t even mentioned, which is interesting considering the timing—the man had just been murdered and Welander and Tischler would still have been his closest friends. We thought that was a little strange. Especially as Tischler seemed to spend half his time talking on the phone with more or less everybody about everything in the world and in the most astonishingly indiscreet way. It was as if the fellow … Eriksson, that is … had simply ceased to exist.”