“Neither. The time and place for each meeting was set at the preceding one.”
“What happened if you needed to get in contact with them? For instance, to change the time of a meeting or something like that?”
“I had a number to call.”
“What was the number?”
“I couldn’t possibly remember.”
“Who answered if you called the number?”
“I don’t know. I never used it.”
“Next question. Who did you hand everything over to?”
“How do you mean?”
“When Fälldin’s term came to an end. Who took your place?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you write a report?”
“No. Everything was classified. I couldn’t even take notes.”
“And you never briefed your successor?”
“No.”
“So what happened?”
“Well … Fälldin left office, and Ola Ullsten came in. I was told that we would have to wait until after the next election. Then Fälldin was re-elected and our meetings were resumed. Then came the election in 1985. The Social Democrats won, and I assume that Palme appointed somebody to take over from me. I transferred to the foreign ministry and became a diplomat. I was posted to Egypt, and then to India.”
Blomkvist went on asking questions for another few minutes, but he was sure that he already had everything Janeryd could tell him. Three names.
Fredrik Clinton.
Hans von Rottinger.
And Evert Gullberg—the man who had shot Zalachenko.
The Zalachenko club.
He thanked Janeryd for the meeting and walked the short distance along Lange Voorhout to Hotel Des Indes, from which he took a taxi to Centraal. It was not until he was in the taxi that he reached into his jacket pocket and stopped the tape recorder.
Berger looked up and scanned the half-empty newsroom beyond the glass cage. Holm was off that day. She saw no-one who showed any interest in her, either openly or covertly. Nor did she have reason to think that anyone on the editorial staff wished her ill.
The email had arrived a minute before. The sender was
Today’s message contained a JPEG, which she opened in Photoshop.
The image was pornographic: a naked woman with exceptionally large breasts, a dog collar around her neck. She was on all fours and being mounted from the rear.
The woman’s face had been replaced with Berger’s. It was not a skilled collage, but probably that was not the point. The picture was from her old byline at Millennium and could be downloaded off the Net.
At the bottom of the picture was one word, written with the spray function in Photoshop.
Whore.
This was the ninth anonymous message she had received containing the word whore, sent apparently by someone at a well-known media outlet in Sweden. She had a cyber-stalker on her hands.
The telephone tapping was a more difficult task than the computer monitoring. Trinity had no trouble locating the cable to Prosecutor Ekström’s home phone. The problem was that Ekström seldom or never used it for work-related calls. Trinity did not even consider trying to bug Ekström’s work phone at police HQ on Kungsholmen. That would have required extensive access to the Swedish cable network, which he did not have.
But Trinity and Bob the Dog devoted the best part of a week to identifying and separating out Ekström’s mobile from the background noise of about 200,000 other mobiles within half a mile of police headquarters.
They used a technique called Random Frequency Tracking System. The technique was not uncommon. It had been developed by the U.S. National Security Agency, and was built into an unknown number of satellites that performed pinpoint monitoring of capitals around the world, as well as flashpoints of special interest.
The NSA had enormous resources and used a vast network in order to capture a large number of mobile conversations in a certain region simultaneously. Each individual call was separated and processed digitally by computers programmed to react to certain words, such as terrorist or Kalashnikov. If such a word occurred, the computer automatically sent an alarm, which meant that some operator would go in manually and listen to the conversation to decide whether it was of interest or not.
It was a more complex problem to identify a specific mobile. Each mobile has its own unique signature—a fingerprint—in the form of the phone number. With exceptionally sensitive equipment the NSA could focus on a specific area to separate out and monitor mobile calls. The technique was simple but not 100 percent effective. Outgoing calls were particularly hard to identify. Incoming calls were simpler because they were preceded by the fingerprint that would enable the phone in question to receive the signal.
The difference between Trinity’s and the NSA’s attempting to eavesdrop could be measured in economic terms. The NSA had an annual budget of several billion U.S. dollars, close to 12,000 full-time agents, and access to cutting-edge technology in IT and telecommunications. Trinity had a van with sixty pounds of electronic equipment, much of which was homemade stuff that Bob the Dog had set up. Through its global satellite monitoring, the NSA could train highly sensitive antennae on a specific building anywhere in the world. Trinity had an antenna constructed by Bob the Dog which had an effective range of about 500 yards.
The relatively limited technology to which Trinity had access meant that he had to park his van on Bergsgatan or one of the nearby streets and laboriously calibrate the equipment until he had identified the fingerprint that represented Ekström’s mobile number. Since he did not know Swedish, he had to relay the conversations via another mobile to Plague, who did the actual eavesdropping.
For five days, Plague, who was looking more and more hollow-eyed, listened in vain to a vast number of calls to and from police headquarters and the surrounding buildings. He heard fragments of ongoing investigations, uncovered planned lovers’ trysts, and taped hours and hours of conversations of no interest whatsoever. Late on the evening of the fifth day, Trinity sent a signal which a digital display instantly identified as Ekström’s mobile number. Plague locked the parabolic antenna on to the exact frequency.
The technology of RFTS worked primarily on incoming calls to Ekström. Trinity’s parabolic antenna captured the search for Ekström’s mobile number as it was sent through the ether.
Because Trinity could record the calls from Ekström, he also got voice-prints that Plague could process.
Plague ran Ekström’s digitized voice through a programme called VPRS, Voiceprint Recognition System. He specified a dozen commonly occurring words, such as OK or Salander. When he had five separate examples of a word, he charted it with respect to the time it took to speak the word, what tone of voice and frequency range it had, whether the end of the word went up or down, and a dozen other markers. The result was a graph. In this way Plague could also monitor outgoing calls from Ekström. His parabolic antenna would be permanently listening out for a call containing Ekström’s characteristic graph curve for one of a dozen commonly occurring words. The technology was not perfect, but roughly half of all the calls that Ekström made on his mobile from anywhere near police headquarters were monitored and recorded.
The system had an obvious weakness. As soon as Ekström left police headquarters, it was no longer possible to monitor his mobile, unless Trinity knew where he was and could park his van in the immediate vicinity.
With the authorization from the highest level, Edklinth had been able to set up a legitimate operations department. He picked four colleagues, purposely selecting younger talent who had experience on the regular police force and had been only recently recruited to SIS. Two had a background in the fraud division, one had been with the financial police, and one was from the violent crimes division. They were summoned to Edklinth’s office and told of their assignment as well as the need for absolute secrecy. He made plain that the investigation wa
s being carried out at the express order of the prime minister. Inspector Figuerola was named as their chief, and she directed the investigation with a force that matched her physical appearance.
But the investigation proceeded slowly. This was largely due to the fact that no-one was quite sure who or what should be investigated. On more than one occasion Edklinth and Figuerola considered bringing Mårtensson in for questioning. But they decided to wait. Arresting him would reveal the existence of the investigation.
Finally, on Tuesday, eleven days after the meeting with the prime minister, Figuerola came to Edklinth’s office.
“I think we’ve got something.”
“Sit down.”
“Evert Gullberg. One of our investigators had a talk with Marcus Erlander, who’s leading the investigation into Zalachenko’s murder. According to Erlander, SIS contacted the Göteborg police just two hours after the murder and gave them information about Gullberg’s threatening letters.”
“That was fast.”
“A little too fast. SIS faxed nine letters that Gullberg had supposedly written. There’s just one problem.”
“What’s that?”
“Two of the letters were sent to the justice department—to the minister of justice and to the deputy minister.”
“I know that.”
“Yes, but the letter to the deputy minister wasn’t logged in at the department until the following day. It arrived with a later delivery.”
Edklinth stared at Figuerola. He felt very afraid that his suspicions were going to turn out to be justified. Figuerola went implacably on.
“So we have SIS sending a fax of a threatening letter that hadn’t yet reached its addressee.”
“Good Lord,” Edklinth said.
“It was someone in Personal Protection who faxed them through.”
“Who?”
“I don’t think he’s involved in the case. The letters landed on his desk in the morning, and shortly after the murder he was told to get in touch with the Göteborg police.”
“Who gave him the instruction?”
“The chief of Secretariat’s assistant.”
“Good God, Monica. Do you know what this means? It means that SIS was involved in Zalachenko’s murder.”
“Not necessarily. But it definitely does mean that some individuals within SIS had knowledge of the murder before it was committed. The only question is: who?”
“The chief of Secretariat …”
“Yes. But I’m beginning to suspect that this Zalachenko club is out of house.”
“How do you mean?”
“Mårtensson. He was moved from Personal Protection and is working on his own. We’ve had him under surveillance around the clock for the past week. He hasn’t had contact with anyone within SIS as far as we can tell. He gets calls on a mobile that we cannot monitor. We don’t know what number it is, but it’s not his normal number. He did meet with the fair-haired man, but we haven’t been able to identify him.”
Edklinth frowned. At the same instant Anders Berglund knocked on the door. He was one of the new team, the officer who had worked with the financial police.
“I think I’ve found Evert Gullberg,” Berglund said.
“Come in,” Edklinth said.
Berglund put a dog-eared black-and-white photograph on the desk. Edklinth and Figuerola looked at the picture, which showed a man that both of them immediately recognized. He was being led through a doorway by two broad-shouldered plain-clothes police officers. The legendary double agent Colonel Stig Wennerström.*
“This print comes from Åhlén and Åkerlund Publishers and was used in Se magazine in the spring of 1964. The photograph was taken in the course of the trial. Behind Wennerström you can see three people. On the right, Detective Superintendent Otto Danielsson, the policeman who arrested him.”
“Yes …”
“Look at the man on the left behind Danielsson.”
They saw a tall man with a narrow moustache who was wearing a hat. He reminded Edklinth vaguely of the writer Dashiell Hammett.
“Compare his face with this passport photograph of Gullberg, taken when he was sixty-six.”
Edklinth frowned. “I wouldn’t be able to swear it’s the same person—”
“But it is,” Berglund said. “Turn the print over.”
On the reverse was a stamp saying that the picture belonged to Åhlén & Åkerlund Publishers and that the photographer’s name was Julius Estholm. The text was written in pencil: Stig Wennerström flanked by two police officers on his way into Stockholm district court. In the background O. Danielsson, E. Gullberg, and H. W. Francke.
“Evert Gullberg,” Figuerola said. “He was SIS.”
“No,” Berglund said. “Technically speaking, he wasn’t. At least not when this picture was taken.”
“Oh?”
“SIS wasn’t established until four months later. In this photograph he was still with the Security Police.”
“Who’s H. W. Francke?” Figuerola said.
“Hans Wilhelm Francke,” Edklinth said. “Died in the early nineties, but was assistant chief of the Security Police in the late fifties and early sixties. He was a bit of a legend, just like Otto Danielsson. I actually met him a couple of times.”
“Is that so?” Figuerola said.
“He left SIS in the late sixties. Francke and P. G. Vinge never saw eye to eye, and he was more or less forced to resign at the age of fifty or fifty-five. Then he opened his own shop.”
“His own shop?”
“He became a consultant in security for industry. He had an office on Stureplan, but he also gave lectures from time to time at SIS training sessions. That’s where I met him.”
“What did Vinge and Francke quarrel about?”
“They were just very different. Francke was a bit of a cowboy who saw KGB agents everywhere, and Vinge was a bureaucrat of the old school. Vinge was fired shortly thereafter. A bit ironic, that, because he thought Palme was working for the KGB.”
Figuerola looked at the photograph of Gullberg and Francke standing side by side.
“I think it’s time we had another talk with Justice,” Edklinth told her.
“Millennium came out today,” Figuerola said.
Edklinth shot her a glance.
“Not a word about the Zalachenko affair,” she said.
“So we’ve got a month before the next issue. Good to know. But we have to deal with Blomkvist. In the middle of all this mess he’s like a hand grenade with the pin pulled.”
CHAPTER 17
Wednesday, June 1
Blomkvist had no warning that someone was in the stairwell when he reached the landing outside his top-floor apartment at Bellmansgatan 1. It was 7:00 in the evening. He stopped short when he saw a woman with short blond curly hair sitting on the top step. He recognized her right away as Monica Figuerola of SIS from the passport photograph Karim had located.
“Hello, Blomkvist,” she said cheerfully, closing the book she had been reading. Blomkvist looked at the book and saw that it was in English, on the idea of God in the ancient world. He studied his unexpected visitor as she stood up. She was wearing a short-sleeved summer dress and had laid a brick-red leather jacket over the top stair.
“We need to talk to you,” she said.
She was tall, taller than he was, and that impression was magnified by the fact that she was standing two steps above him. He looked at her arms and then at her legs and saw that she was much more muscular than he was.
“You spend a couple of hours a week at the gym,” he said.
She smiled and took out her ID.
“My name is—”
“Monica Figuerola, born in 1969, living on Pontonjärgatan on Kungsholmen. You came from Borlänge and you’ve worked with the Uppsala police. For three years you’ve been working in SIS, Constitutional Protection. You’re an exercise fanatic and you were once a top-class athlete, almost made it onto the Swedish Olympic team. What do you want with me?”
She was surprised, but she quickly regained her composure.
“Fair enough,” she said in a low voice. “You know who I am—so you don’t have to be afraid of me.”
“I don’t?”
“There are some people who need to have a talk with you in peace and quiet. Since your apartment and mobile seem to be bugged and we have reason to be discreet, I’ve been sent to invite you.”
“And why would I go anywhere with somebody who works for Säpo?”
She thought for a moment. “Well … you could just accept a friendly personal invitation, or if you prefer, I could handcuff you and take you with me.” She smiled sweetly. “Look, Blomkvist. I understand that you don’t have many reasons to trust anyone from SIS. But it’s like this: not everyone who works there is your enemy, and my superiors really want to talk to you. So, which do you prefer? Handcuffed or voluntarily?”
“I’ve been handcuffed by the police once already this year. And that was enough. Where are we going?”
She had parked around the corner, down on Pryssgränd. When they were settled in her new Saab 9–5, she flipped open her mobile and pressed a speed-dial number.
“We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
She told Blomkvist to fasten his seat belt and drove over Slussen to Östermalm and parked on a side street off Artillerigatan. She sat still for a moment and looked at him.
“This is a friendly invitation, Blomkvist. You’re not risking anything.”
Blomkvist said nothing. He was reserving judgement until he knew what this was all about. She punched in the code on the street door. They took the elevator to the fifth floor, to an apartment with the name Martinsson on the door.
“We’ve borrowed the place for tonight’s meeting,” she said, opening the door. “To your right, into the living room.”
The first person Blomkvist saw was Torsten Edklinth, which was no surprise since Säpo was deeply involved in what had happened, and Edklinth was Figuerola’s boss. The fact that the director of Constitutional Protection had gone to the trouble of bringing him in said that somebody was nervous.
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