Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End: The Story of a Crime

by Leif G. W. Persson

  His own contribution to the list of priorities was a source of satisfaction to him. It dealt with something completely new in the history of the secret police, which in the long run could prove very fortunate; the fact that it was his loser of a nephew who had given him the idea didn’t make matters worse. Berg’s father had been a policeman out in the country, within the old organization, long before it had been nationalized. He had had two sons who had both become policemen. Things had gone well for Berg, far beyond expectations; for his older brother things had gone badly.

  When Berg left the police academy, he started out as a patrolman with the uniformed police department in Stockholm. In his free time he studied for a high school diploma by correspondence. After that he took a leave of absence from the police department and studied law full-time with money he had saved up as a constable. This degree had taken him three years as opposed to the usual five, and when he applied to the prosecutor’s office they had taken him in with open arms. Several of his new colleagues had made the same class journey as he had. After ten years as a prosecutor, he had been approached by the secret police. The police force had been nationalized, and the secret police had been reorganized as a special division of the National Police Board. The old operation needed to be aired out, worn-out brooms exchanged for new ones, and Berg was one of the first to be asked. Ten years later he was in effect head of the whole thing.

  His older brother got married at the same time as he finished school and started as a patrolman with the uniformed police department in Stockholm. In rapid succession he had acquired three children and problems with finances, alcohol, and his marriage. Then his wife left him and took the children with her. He had driven a patrol car under the influence, crashed into a newsstand, been fined and given a suspended sentence, disciplined in the form of suspension and payroll deductions, and finally been offered a new career as watchman at the police department’s lost-and-found office. There he had remained for five years, and the summer when his own son started as a patrolman in Stockholm City he had borrowed a service vehicle, driven out to Vaxholm, and plunged straight into the water from the steamboat pier.

  Berg was firmly convinced that blood was thicker than water, but when it came to his own nephew his conviction had wavered on more than one occasion. When his brother had been killed in the accident—that’s of course how it was described—he had exerted himself vigorously to put some order into the life of his younger relative. Because the difference in age between them was only twelve years—in solitary moments he used to thank his creator that it wasn’t greater than that—he had tried to be like an older brother to him, but with hindsight that had been wasted effort.

  His nephew had had miserable grades during all of his years in school. He had already acquired a well-established reputation as a bully by the end of his first year in elementary school, and the political opinions that he often, and gladly, expressed had never fit on the map provided by the Swedish parliament.

  But he was big and burly, he had a grandfather, a father, and an uncle who were policemen, and he had been welcomed into the fold when he applied to the police academy.

  His career had proceeded without a hitch and after a few years he was working as commander of the garrison with by far the most complaints in the Stockholm Police Department’s riot squad. Without realizing it, he had a quality that made him both useful and usable to the organization he served. Police officers like him create sufficient scope for action for all the normal, functional officers, thought Berg. In addition, he was an untapped resource for the operation that Berg represented.

  An absolute majority of all police officers voted for the conservatives. Berg knew that. He also knew that a sufficient number of them did so for lack of a more extreme alternative, and with that knowledge his mission was established. So: start out by mapping antigovernment elements within the police department and gradually expand the mission to include their counterparts in the military. Several of them already associated privately across operational boundaries, so there were natural inroads and it shouldn’t be too difficult.

  Berg himself had written the long background section to the report on undemocratic movements and elements within the institutions whose mission it was to protect the security of the realm against external and internal attacks, and he had been careful to underscore that there were two organizations that had historically shown themselves to be extraordinarily dangerous for the politically appointed powers that be, namely the military and their own secret police. He had concluded by stating that this was an important but unfortunately overlooked issue, to which, however, significantly greater attention had been devoted for some time. He also had an explanation for why it had turned out this way. “The fact that our Swedish political democracy has been one of the most stable democracies known to twentieth-century European history is in all likelihood essentially the reason that secret police interest in this issue has previously been so low.”

  Twelve days, not fourteen, had passed before Berg and his coworkers had been called up to the government office building in order to give an account of the prioritized activity. Normally there would be three regular participants at these meetings—the minister of justice, the chief legal officer, and Berg himself—but this time there was an additional person in the room. A week earlier the prime minister had let Berg be informed that he had decided to elevate certain security issues to his own chancellery in the Cabinet, and that he had therefore decided that from now on his special adviser would take part in these meetings on behalf of the prime minister, and that he assumed that he would hear from Berg immediately if he had any objections to his choice of person.

  It had been almost seven years since Berg had been forced to listen to the language of power from his superior, and this time, unlike before, he had also been slightly shaken and a little more worried than was pleasant. Actually he had expected something like this—he had not even ruled out the possibility that he would be called up to Rosenbad only to find out that he was being replaced—but this he hadn’t foreseen, especially not the concluding portion of the prime minister’s directive: “objections to my choice.” To Berg’s ears this sounded suspiciously like a hidden message, even a warning.

  Berg, like the prime minister and his adviser, obviously knew that the latter had been classified in the highest protection category for the past several years. The question was whether the prime minister and the person this ultimately concerned also knew anything more, thought Berg. For example, that Berg had certain pieces of information removed from the adviser’s personal file, which he didn’t want the person the information concerned to find out that Berg knew. He had brooded half the night until he saw himself as if in a mirror that mirrored another mirror diagonally behind his back, multiplying him into infinity; the next day he had been both tired and disheartened. For a brief moment he had in complete seriousness considered summoning his most intimate coworker, Police Superintendent Waltin, the head of the external operation, to seek his advice, but this was not a time for weakness, so he had dismissed that thought. Never show what you’re thinking, wait and see, thought Berg. Besides, he didn’t really know if he could completely trust Waltin.

  . . .

  Perhaps I’ve been worrying unnecessarily, thought Berg; looking solely at what had actually been said, their meeting had gone smoothly and with only marginal, factual objections from his superiors. The new minister of justice had first expressed a certain surprise that the Kurds had such far-reaching plans for subversive activity, to judge by the survey of which Berg “so meritoriously” had given an account, but actually he was not so surprised after all if he could “be a little personal,” for he had suspected for quite some time that “there was something fishy.

  “With the Kurds, that is,” he explained.

  There’s one I don’t have to worry about, thought Berg.

  The new participant at the meeting did not say much. For a while it actually appeared as if he had fallen asleep in hi
s seat, leaning back in his chair with eyes closed, but when Berg got to his ongoing investigation of personnel hostile to democracy within the police department and the military, he suddenly revived and raised his heavy eyelids at least slightly.

  Berg didn’t like his look, nor his expression, for that matter. He seemed almost amused, and Berg got an unpleasant feeling that the adviser was not seeing him but rather was observing him as though he were an object and not a person. The adviser suddenly started laughing so that his fat stomach bounced; then he nodded and smiled broadly toward Berg but without moving his eyelids a millimeter.

  “Hear the roar from the crater of justice,” he chuckled and his fat stomach bounced again. “When will we have occasion to enjoy this good cigar? I can hardly contain myself.”

  “According to my colleagues, we will be able to present an initial survey at the beginning of next year,” Berg answered, his expression a model of correctness.

  “The age of miracles is clearly not past,” said the prime minister’s special adviser. He sank back in the chair again with eyelids lowered and an amused smile on his lips.

  That man is not in his right mind, thought Berg. But he didn’t say that.

  . . .

  The following day he met Waltin at the secure location. Waltin had brought with him the papers that had been cleaned out of the special adviser’s file and were now being stored outside the building, while Berg brought what was left with him. Then he visited his workroom on the top floor and read the file while Waltin was pulling on a one-armed bandit that for some unknown reason was installed in the conference room directly below. At regular intervals a faint clanking sound forced its way through the double flooring, and on at least one occasion Waltin shouted with enthusiasm. Why did he do that? thought Berg, who knew that Waltin had his own key to the machine’s coin box.

  There were three documents in the file that troubled Berg and that he blamed himself for not having read before yesterday’s meeting. They were all almost twenty years old and dealt with the special adviser’s time as a draftee in the army. According to the first document he had been placed with a regular infantry regiment in upper Norrland. One month later he had been reassigned to general headquarters in Stockholm after a request from headquarters made directly to the regimental head. There he did service for a little more than a year with a department under the command of general headquarters that produced “non-security-classified instructional materials” for draftees and noncommissioned officers in the army. And when he was discharged, after fifteen months of service, he was still an ordinary draftee.

  The second document contained two different intelligence tests that he had undergone in connection with enlistment. The first was the usual test, which everyone who enlisted had to fill out, and his results had placed him in the highest category, where roughly two percent of every batch tended to land. There was in itself nothing exceptional about that; Berg himself had been in the category just below, but considering the special adviser’s placement as a regular draftee in a regular infantry regiment, there was something that didn’t add up. It would have been reasonable to have at least suggested alternative placement for him, but there was not the least indication of that.

  Instead he came back a week later and underwent yet another test. Berg was no expert on psychological testing, but he could read. On the last page the psychologist who had conducted the test had added a handwritten note: “The respondent has attained the maximum result on Stanford Binet in the expanded variant. According to the distribution for the test in question, this means that he belongs to that portion of the total population which makes up circa .01% of the referenced population.” One in a hundred thousand, thought Berg. One of less than a hundred Swedes, who a few months later joins up as an ordinary drafted soldier in the infantry?

  The third document contained only a typewritten piece of paper and its envelope: The address was handwritten with printed letters and the letter was addressed to “Stockholm Police Department, Investigation Unit, Police Station, Kungsholmen.” From there it had clearly wandered on unknown paths to the archives of the secret police. The sender was anonymous, but from the contents and between the lines it was evident that he worked as a staff officer at the training department, G.H.Q. Stockholm, where, among other things, he took care of draftees’ passes.

  The anonymous informant was writing to point out an obvious anomaly. On the first day at his new service location, one of the draftees had already submitted a pass which granted him leave for the following two weeks. After that he had shown up and submitted another new pass with the same wording. The staff officer interpreted this as so remarkable that he asked him to wait while he checked the pass with the officer who had signed it. He had been “particularly brusquely treated by the aforementioned officer, who in an impudent tone said to me that I should not be meddling in things that were none of my business.” When he returned to his office “the draftee had already departed from quarters and as this obvious anomaly has gone on for almost a year I now turn to you, sir, to comment on the matter. The situation in my workplace is unfortunately not such that I could take up the problem with my superior.”

  “What do you think about this?” asked Berg.

  He and Waltin were sitting on the couch in the conference room and he had time to drink half a pot of coffee while Waltin read and pondered.

  “Looks as though we’ve got another spy on our hands,” Waltin said with a wry smile.

  Two or three, thought Berg, moaning to himself. The second was the minister of justice’s chief legal officer, who usually attended the weekly meetings. He had done so for many years, regardless of which party the minister belonged to. In addition he had a side assignment as legal adviser for the supreme commander, with the rank of lieutenant general and placement with general headquarters.

  The chief legal officer tended to be a very taciturn man. On those rare occasions when he spoke, it was usually to answer a question, and what he said always concerned formalities and judicial questions. He presented an image both agreeable and taciturn. An old-fashioned educated scribe, Berg thought, but because he was not one to fall for a pretty face, and because the chief legal officer took the minutes at their meetings—granted, these were extremely concise—Berg nonetheless had a routine check carried out. His detective had spent an entire week in a cold delivery truck in the midst of a bitterly cold winter outside the chief legal officer’s magnificent villa on Lidingö without having the slightest thing to report. On the eighth night, however, things started happening with a vengeance, and according to the surveillance memorandum on Berg’s desk the next morning, the following had occurred.

  “At two-eighteen hours the surveillance object came out onto the balcony of his bedroom on the upper floor of the villa. Thereafter with a certain difficulty he came to so-called attention and raised a glass of champagne with his right hand, after which he proposed four cheers to His Majesty the King. He was at the time in question dressed in blue briefs with yellow stripes, an army uniform jacket with lieutenant general’s rank markings, ditto cap with peak. The object had thereafter begun singing the first lines of the King’s song, whereupon the door to the balcony was opened from inside the villa and a naked female person came out onto the balcony and led the object through the balcony door into the villa. The female in question is according to our evaluation identical with the object’s wife, who at the moment described made an extremely exhilarated impression. Certain activity appears thereafter to have occurred in the bedroom. Because the curtains had been drawn and the door to the balcony closed, however, the more precise nature of this activity could not be ascertained. At five-thirty hours the light in the bedroom was turned off.”

  How could they know that it was champagne? thought Berg as he fed the surveillance memorandum into his paper shredder.

  Before he and Waltin parted company they agreed to tone down the military aspect of their survey of antidemocratic elements. The minister could hardly be cou
nted on, and two against one was one too many.

  “I think it’s best that we lie low until we see how this develops,” said Berg.

  “Yes, that’s probably the safest until we know if he’s fish or fowl,” agreed Waltin. How can a person who is so talented be a social democrat? he thought.

  Things had gone well and things had gone badly, but Berg had stayed in his position. Things had gone well and things had gone badly, but regardless of which, day had followed day and turned into months and by and by into years, and Berg was still sitting where he was. At the same time it was in some way as though his surroundings—his mission and the people who made that same mission tangible and concrete—were in the process of closing around him. But not to take him in their embrace, which would have been difficult enough, as he preferred a firm handshake at a respectful distance, but rather as preparation for something quite different. Berg had spent a day at the secure location to analyze his situation seriously and in depth, with himself as his only interlocutor.

  Police Superintendent Waltin was Berg’s closest man. He was ten years younger than Berg, and when Berg thought about who would become his successor, thoughts that he didn’t relish, it was Waltin he envisioned. They had a history in common, they had secrets in common, on a few occasions they had even exchanged personal confidences, and in addition he was Waltin’s mentor. Considering their common mission it was also Waltin to whom he had given the task of holding his protective hand around its innermost core, the most sensitive, the most secret of all things secret, that which could not be jeopardized at any price and which must never be revealed: the external operation.

  Nor was there anything that indicated he couldn’t trust Waltin. All the checks he had carried out on him had been completely without result, not the least hint of anything that didn’t add up, if you disregarded that silly story about his secret key to the one-armed bandit and other such childishness. Still, something was wrong. He sensed that it was there and he couldn’t even put his finger on it.