Master, Liar, Traitor, Friend: a Leo Junker case

by Christoffer Carlsson (Translated by Michael Gallagher)

  ‘I didn’t, until yesterday.’

  ‘But the letter,’ he says. ‘The phone number.’

  ‘I didn’t know who it belonged to, just where it went.’

  ‘How did you find that out?’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘I protect my sources.’

  ‘You can’t give me a name, or anything that might lead me to one. But it’s not a name I’m after.’

  ‘Well then, what are you after?’

  Careful now.

  ‘When we spoke yesterday you mentioned computers.’

  ‘VAX computers.’

  ‘What do you know about them?’

  ‘That they have lots of different uses, including several civilian ones, but they also have military applications.’ She hesitates, as though she needs to decide whether or not he can be trusted. ‘They can be used in the development and production of nuclear weapons. And,’ she goes on, ‘I know that these particular ones are heading for East Germany, in breach of the embargo. They’re going to be smuggled over. For the moment, they’re being moved back and forth between a number of addresses in Stockholm. East Germany is using parts of Stockholm’s underworld to do it.’ She strokes her mug with one finger. ‘That’s true. Isn’t it?’

  ‘Don’t you already know that?’

  ‘Just say whether it’s true or not.’

  Charles nods carefully.

  ‘I know that the VAX computers arrived in Sweden from America via Håkansson’s company, Sunitron,’ she continues, ‘and that’s where you came in.’

  Someone must have leaked. Someone at their place, who knew that The Bureau got involved at that point, and that Charles and Paul are primarily responsible. Someone who doesn’t know about their unofficial role, that they’ve been doing it for ages. Or else it’s someone who knows very well what their actual involvement is but is withholding that information from the journalist, since the informant might lose out by telling her that.

  One of the bandits? Öberg himself?

  No. Savolainen?

  Savolainen.

  ‘What was it you wanted from us?’

  ‘Confirmation.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘That this is true.’ She looks him straight in the eye, calm and cool. ‘East German intelligence is in cahoots with known Swedish criminals. You do realise what a story this is?’

  That’s her scoop, Charles thinks. She mustn’t know about my and Paul’s involvement.

  ‘Haven’t I already given you confirmation that it is correct?’

  ‘I want names.’

  ‘Whose names?’

  ‘The Swedish criminals, the East German agents. As many as possible.’

  She leans back in her chair and looks out the window.

  ‘We haven’t managed to implicate the East Germans. Up to now, we have only been able to tie the Swedes to the computers. I can give you their names.’

  ‘On the record?’

  He laughs, since he’s expected to.

  ‘Absolutely not. I can give you them, but you’ll have to confirm them with someone else.’

  ‘And what do you want from me?’

  ‘Two things. First of all, I want to know how you got hold of the telephone number you contacted me on. And secondly, you show me the data you’ve got. This is going to look huge in the headlines, which it is. It’s important for us to safeguard our international relations, not least for the prime minister. In his view, the GDR is just like any other trading partner.’

  She stands up, grabs a notebook and pen from the worktop, and sits down again.

  ‘You first.’

  ‘Jan Savolainen,’ says Charles. ‘And Jakob Öberg.’

  She writes it down, asks Charles to spell Savolainen, asks if it’s Jakob with a K or a C, but it’s just a game, it’s obvious that she already knew of them. She’d never get a word out of Öberg, but Savolainen is less of a challenge.

  That’s who she’s been in touch with. That’s dangerous. Savolainen knows about his and Paul’s true role in the whole thing — Savolainen knows, but he must have not mentioned it to her. The question is, why not?

  Or perhaps he has revealed it to her. Maybe she knows, too. She might be trying to get him to paint himself into a corner.

  Charles blinks.

  Everything’s spinning.

  ‘Any more?’ she says.

  ‘That’s what we’ve managed to tie to the case. That’s what we’ve got.’

  She can’t hide her disappointment; even her shoulders give it away, as they sink downwards. Charles drinks some coffee.

  ‘Your turn,’ he says. ‘How did you get hold of my telephone number?’

  ‘I got hold of some of Håkansson’s paperwork. He’d written it down.’

  ‘Sven-Olof Håkansson?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Strange.’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ she says with a slight smile.

  In early February, before the goods got stuck at West German customs, Charles had had direct contact with Håkansson. He gave Håkansson his number, but insisted that he was to memorise it and not write it down under any circumstances. Håkansson sighed and said that Charles was paranoid, but still did as he’d been asked.

  He said.

  Shit.

  ‘It might become clear, eventually,’ says Charles. ‘And then the second thing — that you show me your info before publication. I won’t be asking you to change anything, suppress any information or details. That’s usually the way of things, but I’m not going to ask you to agree to that. I just want you to give me some advance warning, so that my colleagues and I know what’s coming. That’s all. And,’ Charles adds, ‘that you don’t hold anything back. How far off publication are you?’

  ‘I’ve got other stuff to do at work — this is basically something I’m doing on my own time. So it will probably be a while yet.’

  They sit in silence. She seems to have run out of questions, and he really just wants to get out of there. Something’s not right.

  He leans forward, resting his forearms on the edge of the table.

  ‘Next time you contact me, do it in the normal way. It makes things easier, for you, and for us.’

  ‘I had to be careful.’ She folds her arms. ‘I didn’t know what your role was.’

  She still doesn’t, but she suspects.

  Beyond the kitchen window, the rain is still falling. And in here, at the little table, the air has gone thin. It feels like a noose being put round Charles’ neck.

  ONT ÄREN TELL

  At the heart of Kungsholmen, just a stone’s throw from HQ, there’s an old motel. It once had a neon sign, which, when it worked, informed you that you were standing outside PONTONJÄRENS MOTELL.

  The motel occupies the basement, half a flight of stairs down from street level. The enormous space is divided into rooms, each with a small, narrow window up near the ceiling. Each room contains a single bed, a bedside table, a lamp, and a wardrobe. That’s it. On the edge of the bed in Room 2, sitting in front of Paul and Charles, is a severe-looking man with pale skin, square features, low, droopy eyebrows, and eyes so deep-set that he always looks drawn and ashen. A dark-brown overcoat is slung over the bed.

  Our man in Stockholm.

  His handshake is cool and noncommittal; he’s wearing a pair of light-blue jeans and a white T-shirt, like Bruce Springsteen on the cover of Born in the USA. That might be the look he’s going for, in keeping with the East German intelligence service’s famous sense of irony.

  ‘Heffler,’ he introduces himself. ‘Good evening. As I understand it, you are both fluent German speakers?’

  ‘That’s correct,’ Paul replies in German.

  Heffler is just the alias the Stasi gave him the first time he found himself inside The Firm’s
four walls … IA Heffler. Just like there are supposed to be people employed by IKEA whose only task is to give names to the company’s products, the Stasi, it is said, have a working group whose sole socialist endeavour is to create aliases for the Informal Associates that their operatives recruit. Charles has got one, Wächter, as does Paul, Meister.

  There’s no way of knowing how long Heffler has been tailing them. Days? Weeks? According to Paul, he didn’t make himself known until today, when he walked past the car on Barnängsgatan while Charles was at Cats Falck’s kitchen table trying to keep his nerves under control.

  Heffler carried on for another block, crossed the street, and then went back the way he’d come — and once he was alongside the passenger door, he opened it and slipped onto the seat next to Paul. He then forced Paul to drive around the block, and named a time and place — here and now — before opening the door and getting out again.

  It’s not quite as elegant as you might imagine.

  ‘We’re ready,’ Heffler says. ‘Monday. There’s a morning ferry from Malmö just before six. From Denmark, we take them to Ghent.’

  ‘Why Belgium?’ says Charles.

  ‘That’s the route we’ve managed to piece together. If we hadn’t been waiting for everything to align for all those involved, we would have done it some time ago. A week ago they were to reach us via Spain. The week before, we were expecting them via Switzerland. But these are tough times. One of our …’

  A packet of cigarettes is lying on the bedside table. He pulls one out, puts it in his mouth and then pats his trouser pocket for a lighter.

  ‘One of our colleagues in Ghent gave us the opening, after having recruited a marvellous woman with connections at one of the courier companies that delivers goods around Belgium. She …’

  When he can’t find one, he moves on to his coat, rooting around the pockets. That’s when it peeks out, the varnished revolver, black and heavy.

  ‘Of course, we had to check her out a number of times.’

  He manages to produce a box of matches from somewhere. The tobacco catches and hisses in the quiet room, sounds almost like walking through dead leaves. He looks at the two men, then up at the little window that affords a view only of the shoes and trousers of passing pedestrians.

  ‘Fascinating, isn’t it? Just seeing people’s feet.’ He holds out the cigarette packet towards them. ‘Perhaps you’d like one?’

  ‘No, thanks,’ says Charles.

  This is the way the Stasi always work. Heffler is the hub in a network of several players who have synchronised to enable the shipment. The Stasi never have direct contact with the goods or the people concerned; they always use middlemen and lackeys who never know more than is strictly necessary. That’s what makes the Stasi invisible, what gives them power.

  ‘You must’ve been scared,’ Heffler says now, ‘back at the end of February, when the computers just disappeared. My Resident has explained to me that you were rather upset by our being helped by the city’s more unsavoury elements.’

  ‘Upset is the wrong word,’ says Paul. ‘Concerned, more like. They are unreliable. And we know,’ he went on, ‘that one of them has been spouting off.’

  ‘Really?’ He raises an eyebrow, but they’re so low that it makes no difference. That must cause a person problems, not ever being able to look surprised. ‘He has, has he?’

  ‘You know who it is,’ says Charles.

  ‘I have my suspicions. That was a miscalculation from our side. We thought Savolainen was with us. Who has he leaked to?’

  ‘A reporter, at Swedish Television.’

  ‘And what, more specifically, has he leaked?’

  ‘That’s what we don’t know,’ says Charles, before recounting his conversation with Cats.

  ‘Unfortunate,’ is Heffler’s only comment.

  ‘We suspect,’ Charles continues, ‘that she may be rather more interested in us than she let on. She claims that her story is about your dealings with Swedish criminals, but we believe that she may have played down her interest in our possible involvement.’

  ‘Of course,’ Heffler says, thoughtfully. ‘Who wouldn’t? What’s the journalist’s name?’

  ‘Cats Falck.’

  ‘Unfortunate, to say the least. But this will sort itself out. Just make sure that the lorry delivering the goods from Stockholm on Monday doesn’t have company.’

  That is more difficult than it might seem. The Bureau has its watchful eyes on the goods twenty-four hours a day, eyes that never blink, and a car ready to follow them whenever they move around. Charles and Paul can’t sit in the one that’s going to follow the lorry — that’s too risky, too close. Distance is everything.

  The ceiling above them hangs claustrophobically low. Heffler stubs his cigarette out on the bedside table. An ugly, rough scar forms on the surface, and the smell of burnt wood fills the room.

  When the October sun is low in the sky, the Sofia church tower casts a heavy shadow over one of Södermalm’s decrepit blocks, one due for imminent redevelopment. One of the side streets is narrow and dark, an ideal place to kill someone, if you weren’t able to do so inside.

  The second floor of one of the buildings is home to Jan Savolainen. There’s no name on the door, just a subtle message to the postman and any other visitors: GO AWAY.

  ‘We ought to punish him,’ Paul says on the way up the stairs. ‘We ought to neutralise him.’

  ‘But he already knows too much. It’s better to make sure he has something to lose by talking to Falck.’

  The face that peers round the door stinks of beer and cigarettes. It’s been more than six months, but the signs of Savolainen’s previous run-in with Charles are obvious: a horrible tear runs along his lip, almost the entire width of his mouth.

  ‘We want to talk.’ Charles holds up a bag of amphetamine in front of him. ‘It’s worth it.’

  ‘I don’t want that stuff. I’m going to give up, get clean.’

  That makes Charles laugh.

  ‘Open up now.’

  ‘I don’t know what you want.’ Savolainen lights a cigarette and leans against the work surface. ‘Me and Öberg have done exactly what you told us to.’

  ‘That’s good.’ Charles pulls up a chair, sits down at his kitchen table. ‘That’s good, Jan.’

  ‘Fucking weird orders, I’ll tell you that,’ he says, blowing out smoke. ‘Move them there, move them back again. They’re fucking heavy and all.’

  Charles places the bag of amphetamine on the table. He pulls out the cash from the inside pocket of his coat, counts eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen thousand crowns.

  ‘That should pay your rent for a while,’ says Paul. ‘And any Christmas presents. It’s nearly that time, you know.’

  ‘Fuck off. You know where that money’ll end up.’

  ‘How much do you owe Öberg?’

  ‘Fifteen thousand.’

  He’s exaggerating, of course, but probably not by that much. Charles lays another five thousand-crown notes on the table.

  ‘It’s yours, on two conditions. Firstly, we ask the questions and you answer, without lying. We’ll come back to the second thing — that will take a bit more work.’

  ‘Work? What the hell is that supposed to mean?’ Savolainen’s eyes fix on the bag. ‘Chuck it here.’

  ‘As I was saying, we’ll come back to that.’ Charles gives him the bag and then crosses one leg over the other. ‘First of all. Cats Falck.’

  ‘Who is that?’

  ‘I know that you two have spoken.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re on about.’

  ‘Jan,’ says Paul. ‘Come off it.’

  Savolainen drops the cigarette into the sink. It hisses as it lands. He opens the bag, puts his finger in his mouth, and then pushes it down into the white stuff before he polishes his gums
with it.

  ‘All I want to know is the nature of your relationship, what she asked you, and what you answered.’

  His eyes flit back and forth between Charles and Paul, and then settle on Charles again.

  ‘I didn’t mention you. Not a word.’

  ‘Take it easy now. How did you meet?’

  Savolainen pushes his finger into the bag again, then brings it to his mouth, this time licking it like a kid with a lollipop.

  ‘She called me.’

  ‘How had she got hold of your number?’

  ‘She said that she’d spoken to Håkansson’s wife, Anita.’

  ‘Anette,’ says Paul. ‘And that’s what led Falck to you?’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘And what did you talk about?’

  ‘She just asked loads of questions about the stuff, about Öberg, about the East Germans, about you.’

  A slight tremor runs through Charles. He can feel it in his fingertips. Savolainen looks down at the notes and licks his lips.

  ‘She asked how you were involved,’ he says. ‘But I didn’t say anything. Seriously, that’s what happened.’

  This goes on for a couple of minutes, Charles and Paul asking and Savolainen denying.

  ‘I think he’s telling the truth,’ says Charles.

  ‘Damn right I am.’

  ‘That’s good, Jan,’ says Paul. ‘And if she gets back to you, what do you say then?’

  ‘I’m not a fucking kid,’ he hisses. ‘I know what to say.’

  ‘Good,’ says Charles. ‘So, onto the second part of this. The bit that’s going to take a bit of work.’ He takes a little notebook and pen from his coat pocket, writes down the car’s registration. ‘This car,’ he says, pushing the note across the table, ‘is going to be parked near the goods’ location tomorrow, in the car park at Skärmarbrink.’

  Savolainen leans forward, reads the number, and looks at him, puzzled.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Smash four or five bottles in advance. Take them with you in a thick blanket or a jumper and spread the splinters out around the car park, but not too close to the car. Make it look like a fight. Slash one of the car’s tyres. But make two holes, one tiny little one close to the rim, so that you can be sure that the air will escape, then you do a rougher one, the old-fashioned way, you know, in the tread itself. It’s one of our cars, but it’s on standard tyres, so it shouldn’t be too difficult.’