As a young man, first when he was seventeen and then the following year, he had hitchhiked his way through Europe, despite his father’s stern opposition to such hazardous undertakings. On both trips he had succeeded in getting as far as Paris, and then back home again. He still recalled desperate roadside waits in the rain, his backpack far too heavy, and the drivers who picked him up but bored him stiff. But two occasions stood out from all the rest. The first time he had been standing in pouring rain just outside Ghent in Belgium - with hardly any money left and on his way home. A car had stopped and taken him all the way to Helsingborg. He had never forgotten that feeling of happiness, of getting back to Sweden with a single ride. The other memory was also from Belgium. One Saturday evening, this time on the way to Paris, he had been marooned in a tiny village off the beaten track. He had indulged in a bowl of soup in a cheap cafe, and then gone out in search of a viaduct he might be able to sleep under. He had noticed a man standing by the side of the road, in front of a war memorial. The man raised a trumpet to his lips and beat a mournful tattoo in memory of all the soldiers who had been killed during the two world wars. Wallander was deeply touched by the moment, and he’d never forgotten it.
But now, early in the morning, there was a woman standing at the side of the road, thumbing a lift. It was almost as if she had materialised from a different era. She ran to catch up with the car as he pulled over, jumped in and sat in the passenger seat beside him. She seemed to be pleased with the prospect of getting as far as Hoor - she would then continue her journey up towards Smaland. She smelled strongly of perfume and seemed very tired. She kept pulling her skirt down over her knees, and he thought he could see traces of stains on it. Even as he pulled over he regretted stopping. Why on earth should he pick up somebody he had never met before? What could he talk to her about? She said nothing, and neither did Wallander. There was a ringing noise inside her backpack. She dug out a mobile phone and read the display, but didn’t answer it.
‘They’re disruptive,’ said Wallander. ‘Mobile phones.’
‘You don’t need to answer if you don’t want to.’
She spoke with a broad Scanian accent. Wallander guessed that she was from Malmo, from a working-class family. He tried to imagine her work, her life. She wasn’t wearing a ring on her left hand, and he noticed that she had bitten her nails down to the quick. Wallander rejected the idea that she was some kind of carer, or a hairdresser. She could hardly be a waitress either. She also seemed restless. She was biting her lower lip, almost chewing it.
‘Were you standing there long?’ he asked.
‘Fifteen minutes or so. I had to get out of the previous car. The driver was making a nuisance of himself.’
She sounded preoccupied, unwilling to talk. Wallander decided not to disturb her any more. He would drop her off in Hoor and they would never meet again. He toyed with the idea of giving her a name: Carola, who came from nowhere.
He asked where she would like to be dropped.
‘I’m hungry,’ she said. ‘Somewhere near a cafe.’
He stopped at a roadside restaurant. She smiled rather shyly, thanked him and headed for the entrance. Wallander reversed - then suddenly had no idea what to do next. Where was he going? His mind was a blank. He was in Hoor, he’d just dropped off a hitchhiker - but why was he here? He became increasingly panic-stricken. He tried to calm himself down, closed his eyes and waited for normality to return.
It was more than a minute before he remembered where he was going. Where did it come from, this sudden emptiness that overcame him? What was wiping his mind clean? Why couldn’t his doctors tell him what was happening to him?
Although it was five or six years since he had last visited the man he was on his way to see, he remembered how to get there. The road meandered through some woods, passed a few paddocks with Iceland ponies, then sank down into a hollow. The red-brick house was still standing, just as tumbledown as he remembered it from the last time. The only thing that seemed to have changed was that there was a shiny new mailbox beside the open gate, with space for post office vans and refuse trucks to turn round. The name ‘Eber’ was written in large red letters on the box. Wallander switched off the engine but remained sitting at the wheel. He recalled the first time he had met Hermann Eber. It was more than twenty years ago, 1985 or 1986, on police business; Eber had entered Sweden illegally from East Germany. He had requested political asylum, and it had eventually been granted. Wallander was the first to interview him when he turned up at the police station in Ystad and claimed to be a refugee. Wallander could still recall their faltering conversation in English, and his suspicions when Hermann Eber said he was a member of the Stasi, the East German secret police, and feared for his life. Somebody else had taken over the case, and it was only later, when Eber had been granted a residence permit, that he contacted Wallander on his own initiative. He had become almost fluent in Swedish in an astonishingly short time, and he came to see Wallander in order to thank him. Thank me for what? Wallander had asked. Eber had explained how surprised he had been to discover that a police officer could be as friendly as Wallander was to a man from a foreign country. He had slowly realised that the malicious propaganda directed by East Germany towards neighbouring countries was not reciprocated in those lands. He felt he had to thank somebody, he said. And Wallander was the person he had chosen for his symbolic gratitude. They started meeting socially now and then, because Hermann Eber’s great passion was Italian opera. When the Berlin Wall came down, Eber sat in Wallander’s apartment in Mariagatan, his eyes overflowing with tears, and watched the historical events unfolding on television. He had confessed to Wallander in a series of long conversations that he was no longer a passionate enthusiast of the political system in East Germany. He had begun to hate himself. He had been one of the men who had bugged, persecuted and pestered his fellow citizens. He himself had been privileged, and had even shaken the hand of Erich Honecker at one of the sumptuous banquets put on by the state. He had felt so proud to have shaken the hand of the great leader. But afterwards he wished he had never done it. In the end, his doubts about what he had been doing and an increasing conviction that East Germany was a political project condemned to death had become so great that he decided to defect. He chose Sweden merely because he felt his chances of fleeing there were good. He could easily acquire false ID papers and board one of the ferries to Trelleborg.
Eber’s worries about his past eventually catching up with him were very strong. Despite the fact that East Germany no longer existed, the people he had targeted were still there. It had become clear to Wallander that nobody could assuage Eber’s fear; it was a constant presence and would probably never disappear completely. As the years passed, Eber became increasingly reserved and withdrawn; their meetings became less frequent and eventually ceased altogether.
The last time they had seen each other was because Wallander had heard that his friend was ill. One Sunday afternoon he drove out to Hoor in order to see how things were. Eber was the same as ever, possibly a bit thinner. He was about the same age as Wallander but seemed to be ageing more quickly. Wallander had thought a lot about Hermann Eber’s fate on his drive back home after the failed visit, when they had sat and looked at each other without being able to think of anything to say.
The door of the red-brick house had been opened slightly. Wallander got out of his car.
‘It’s only me,’ he shouted. ‘Your old friend from Ystad.’
Hermann Eber appeared in the doorway. He was wearing an ancient tracksuit that Wallander suspected was one of the few garments he’d had with him when he fled from East Germany. The garden was full of rubbish. He wondered fleetingly if Eber had set up cunning mantraps around his house.
‘You,’ he said. ‘How long is it since you last came to visit me?’
‘Many years. But when have you been to visit me? Do you even know that I’ve moved to the country?’
Eber shook his head. He was almost completely bald.
His wandering eyes convinced Wallander that he was still afraid of a possible revenge attack.
Eber pointed at a decrepit-looking garden table and some rickety chairs. Wallander realised that Eber didn’t want to let him into the house. His place had always been a mess, but in the past he had invited Wallander inside anyway. Perhaps it’s in an even worse state now, Wallander thought. He sat down carefully on the chair that seemed least likely to collapse. Eber remained standing, leaning against the house. Wallander wondered if he still retained the acuity that had been his most characteristic trait. Eber was an intelligent man, even if he led a life that seemed at odds with his intellectual capacity. Several times he had surprised Wallander by turning up to meetings unwashed and smelly. He dressed oddly, and in the middle of winter often wore summer clothes. But Wallander had realised at an early stage that beneath this confusing and often repulsive surface was a clear head. The way he analysed what was no longer an East German miracle had given Wallander insight into a social system and a view of politics that had previously been beyond his comprehension.
Hermann Eber had often reacted with reluctance and irritation when Wallander asked him questions about the work he did for the Stasi. It was still difficult, hurtful, a pain he was unable to shake off. But at times when Wallander had been sufficiently patient, Eber had eventually begun to talk about it. One day he had admitted, matter-of-factly, that for a while he had worked in one of the secret departments concerned exclusively with killing people. That was why Wallander had thought of him when Ytterberg called and told him about Louise von Enke’s pathology report.
When Eber appeared in the doorway he was carrying a bundle of papers, and behind both ears were pencils. All the years he had lived in Sweden, Eber had earned a living by writing crossword puzzles for various German newspapers. He specialised in very difficult puzzles, aimed at the most advanced solvers. Creating crosswords was an art - it wasn’t just a matter of fitting words into a grid with as few black squares as possible; there was always another dimension: a theme hard to detect, possibly associations with various historic figures. That is how he had described his work to Wallander.
He nodded at the papers Eber had in his hand.
‘Some more brain-teasers?’
‘The most difficult I’ve done. A crossword puzzle in which the most elegant clues are linked with classical philosophy.’
‘But surely you must want people to solve your puzzles?’
Eber didn’t reply. It occurred to Wallander that the man sitting opposite him in the shabby old tracksuit dreamed of creating a crossword puzzle that nobody would ever manage to solve. Wallander wondered for a moment if Eber’s fear had driven him crazy, despite everything. Or perhaps it was living here in this hollow where the hills on all sides could be perceived as walls closing in on him.
He didn’t know. Hermann Eber was still at his core a complete stranger as far as Wallander was concerned.
‘I need your help,’ he said, putting the pathology report on the table and proceeding to explain calmly and thoroughly everything that had happened.
Eber put on a pair of dirty glasses. He studied the papers for a few minutes, then suddenly stood up and disappeared into the house. Wallander waited. Eber still hadn’t returned after fifteen minutes. Wallander wondered if he had gone to bed, or perhaps started to prepare a meal and forgotten about the guest waiting for him on the rickety garden chair. But he continued to wait, his impatience growing. He decided to give Eber five more minutes.
At that moment Eber re-emerged. He had some yellowed documents in his hand and a thick book under his arm.
‘This stuff belongs to a different world,’ Eber said. ‘I had to search for it.’
‘But you appear to have found something.’
‘It was clever of you to come to me. I’m probably the only person who can give you the help you need. At the same time, I must tell you that this aroused many nasty memories. I started crying as I was searching. Did you hear that?’
Wallander shook his head. He thought Eber was exaggerating. There were no signs of tears on his face.
‘I recognise the substances,’ Eber resumed. ‘They have woken me up out of a Sleeping Beauty slumber that I would have preferred to remain in undisturbed for the rest of my life.’
‘So you know what it is?’
‘I think so. The ingredients, the synthetically produced chemical substances mentioned in the report, are exactly what I used to work with.’
He paused. Wallander waited. Eber didn’t like being interrupted. He had once told Wallander, when under the influence of several glasses of whisky, that it had to do with all the power he once had as a high-ranking officer in the Stasi. Nobody in those days dared to contradict him.
Eber cradled the thick book in his hands, as if it were a holy writ. He seemed hesitant. Wallander would have to be careful. A blackbird perched on the rim of a plastic kiddie pool nearby. Eber immediately slammed the heavy book down onto the table. The blackbird flew off. Wallander remembered that Eber suffered from a mysterious fear of birds.
‘Let’s hear it, then,’ said Wallander. ‘What are these substances?’
‘I dealt with them a thousand years ago. I thought they were out of my life for good. Now you turn up one lovely summer’s day and remind me of something I don’t want to remember.’
‘What is it you want to forget?’
Eber sighed and scratched at where his hair used to be. Wallander knew it was important to keep a grip on him, otherwise he might disappear to spend endless hours composing his crossword puzzles.
‘What is it you want to forget?’ Wallander repeated.
Eber began rocking back and forth on his chair, but he said nothing. Wallander’s patience was stretched thin.
‘I want to know if you can identify these substances,’ he said sharply.
‘I’ve dealt with them in the past.’
‘That’s not a good enough answer. “Dealt with”? You have to be clearer than that! Don’t forget you once promised me you’d do me a favour when I asked for one.’
‘I haven’t forgotten.’
Eber shook his head, and Wallander could see that he was tortured by the situation.
‘Take your time,’ he said. ‘I need your answer, your views and your thoughts. But there’s no hurry. I can come back later if you prefer.’
‘No, no, stay! I just need time to find my way back into the past. It’s as if I’m being forced to dig out a tunnel that I’ve already refilled carefully.’
Wallander stood up.
‘I’ll go for a walk,’ he said. ‘I’ll take a closer look at the Icelandic horses.’
‘Half an hour, that’s all I need.’
Hermann Eber wiped the sweat from his brow. Wallander walked out of the hollow and back to the nearest paddock.
After half an hour, it had started to get windy, and a bank of clouds was building up from the south. Hermann Eber was sitting motionless in the garden chair when Wallander opened the rusty gate. Now there was another book lying on the table, an old diary with brown covers. Eber started talking the moment Wallander sat down. When he was agitated, as he was now, his voice became shrill, almost strident. Wallander had several times wondered with distaste what it would have been like to be interrogated by Hermann Eber when he was still convinced that East Germany was a paradise on earth.
‘Igor Kirov,’ Eber began, ‘also known as “Boris”. That was his stage name, the alias he used. A Russian citizen, the official liaison with one of the KGB’s special divisions in Moscow. He came to East Berlin a few months before the Wall went up. I met him several times, though I had no direct contact with him. But there was no doubt about his reputation: Boris knew his stuff. He had zero tolerance for irregularities or slapdash procedures. It was no more than a couple of months before several of the highest officials in the Stasi had been transferred or demoted. You could say he was the Russian star, the much-feared centre of the KGB’s operations in East Berlin. Before he
had been with us for six months, he had cracked Great Britain’s most efficient spy ring. Three or four of their agents were executed after secret and summary trials. They would normally have been exchanged for Soviet or East German agents imprisoned in London, but Boris went straight to Ulbricht and demanded that the British agents be executed. He wanted to send an unambiguous warning not only to foreign agents, but also to any East German citisens who might be contemplating treason. Boris had turned himself into a universally feared legend after less than a year in East Berlin. He apparently led a simple life. Nobody knew if he was married, if he had any children, if he drank, or even if he played chess. The only thing that could be said about him with any certainty was that he had a unique ability to organise effective cooperation between the Stasi and the KGB. When the end came, we in the Stasi were stunned. The whole of East Germany would have been, if events had been made public. But everything was hushed up, of course.’
‘What happened?’
‘One day he simply vanished. A magician had draped a cloth over his head and hey presto, he was no longer there! But obviously, nobody applauded. The big hero had sold his soul to the English, and of course to the USA as well. I don’t know how he managed to conceal the fact that he had been responsible for the execution of British agents. Perhaps he didn’t need to. Security organisations have to be cynical in order to operate efficiently. It was a slap in the face for both the KGB and the Stasi. Heads rolled. Ulbricht was summoned to Moscow and came back crestfallen, even though it was hardly his fault that Boris hadn’t been unmasked. Markus Wolf, the head of the Stasi, was very close to being left out in the cold. No doubt he would have been if he hadn’t issued an order that brings us back to why you’re sitting here today. An order that was given the highest priority.’
The Troubled Man (2011) kw-10 Page 25
