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

by Leif G. W. Persson

  In the world of rationally managed politics there was no room for any feelings, and as soon as the pressure from the East had started to lessen, it came time to slacken the ties to the West in order to gradually cut the most critical lines. And bit by bit Sweden had started to execute the policy of neutrality to which it had given not much more than lip service in the previous ten years. If the date for the prime minister’s farewell letter to Buchanan, April 1955, had been a coincidence determined by his personal situation—you could get that impression when you read it—it was in any event a timely coincidence. Talk that the policy being conducted should also have been “strict” was of course pure nonsense intended for the audience in the sixth row. No rational politician let himself be directed by emotions, but only pure lunatics tried to be strict.

  In the mid-1950s it was high time to set up a new game plan. Swedish society had been Americanized at a brisk pace and in a confidence-inspiring way for the Americans. A country where the youth drank Coca-Cola, listened to Elvis, and had their first sexual experiences in the vinyl backseat of a Chevy convertible from Detroit was necessarily a good country. And from the Swedish side, of course, there was nothing to fear. The United States was at a secure distance geographically, and not even the Communist Party leader Hilding Hagberg believed in all seriousness that there was any risk of being attacked from that direction. That was just something he said when he went to Moscow to bring home his periodic support payments: that the Swedish military intelligence service let him be supported year after year was quite simply due to the fact that it served Sweden’s security and political stability on the Scandinavian peninsula.

  All that was thirty years ago, and because the special adviser lived and worked in the present, it wasn’t history that was his problem. The constant postwar cheating under the cover of the wet wool blanket of neutrality was a given fact, and for him it was a matter of how the country would be able to free itself from that history without jeopardizing the policy of neutrality, which with every day that passed became an ever better and cheaper alternative.

  This was the problem that his and Forselius’s seminars had dealt with exclusively. The other thing was already known, so why waste time on it? Instead they had devoted all of their power to trying to propound the required conditions so that the policy that had actually been conducted during the postwar period could be openly discussed. Not with the aim of any higher measure of historical or political insight within the population—on the contrary, they were grateful that interest had decreased with the passing years—but rather because there were simply still very strong political and security reasons to do so.

  Despite the fact that the secret Swedish military and political cooperation with the United States and the other Western powers was thirty years old, and that in all essentials it had ceased twenty years ago, it still had considerable political explosive force. Describing the Russian bear as more and more moth-eaten was one thing. It wasn’t true, however, for his paws had never been more powerful than now; the fact that certain small teddy bears in his own winter lair had started talking back and nosing longingly in a westerly direction as soon as the wind was right only made him even more irritable.

  Liberalization in the Soviet Union, the increasingly open opposition, the clearer signs of a faltering economy, had more and more often given the special adviser sleepless nights. As a thinker and strategist, given the choice between a stable dictatorship and one in democratic transformation, he obviously preferred the former because then the problems were much easier to calculate and solve. What the people who lived there thought and felt about the matter left him cold. It would be best for him if they didn’t think at all. And best for them if they assigned him and people like him to think for them.

  Obviously neither he nor Forselius lived with the illusion that the Russian military intelligence service had been successfully deceived. Their political leaders had been informed long ago of the Swedish double-dealing. The Russians knew, the special adviser and those like him knew that the Russians knew, and the Russians obviously knew that the Swedish intelligence service knew that they knew, too. Everyone who knew something knew everything they needed to know, and obviously it was also known that in general terms this was an ineffective means for anyone who wanted to bring political pressure to bear to do so, as long as that knowledge could be met with total denial from the one who was being subjected to it. And as long as ordinary people only knew who they could trust.

  It was the public knowledge and public questioning in Sweden in particular that were the critical factors. Simply put, it was the Swedish population that must first discover that their leaders had deceived them; as soon as they were convinced of that, they would also make it possible for the opponent to exploit the knowledge he’d had all along and transform it into a sharp-edged political weapon. From Krassner to the Swedish media to the citizens of the nation, thought the special adviser.

  There was one prerequisite for the special adviser to be able to solve his problem in a risk-free way for the country and its citizens, and it was more important than all the others combined. First the Russian bear must be neutralized. To just shoot him was no longer imaginable—that possibility had passed almost fifty years ago, and if the Swedes themselves had been holding the shotgun it would probably never have existed—rather it was a matter of waiting for the time when the bear, for other reasons, had become so old, feeble, and toothless that it was completely harmless.

  Only then might the people begin to uncover Sweden’s secret history from the time after the Second World War. They might do that themselves, seeing to it that it happened under controlled circumstances and at a sensible pace. Preferably on the basis of new historical research, debates on the cultural pages of the newspapers, and strategically published memoirs written by old politicians whose names no one could even recall. You might even offer the occasional daring, youthful journalistic revelation.

  But before that it was unthinkable, and the combination of the prime minister’s youthful risky undertakings as a secret agent and Krassner’s considerably later ambitions as an investigative reporter was a time bomb ticking under the sofa where the special adviser used to lie stretched out while he solved his problems. And right now he was heartily sick of them both. Furthermore, it was high time to take a shower and change clothes, for in an hour he would be feeding his old friend, mentor, and comrade-at-arms Professor Forselius.

  “How is it, Bo?” said Johansson, nodding toward the broad gold ring on Jarnebring’s ring finger as he helped himself from the plate of cold cuts they’d ordered as an appetizer. “I thought she was supposed to give you one with a skull on it?”

  “Like before,” said Jarnebring, smiling and shrugging his broad shoulders. “Damn good gal, actually. The ones with the skull were sold out, so it ended up being an ordinary plain one,” said Jarnebring, spreading his fingers.

  “Nice to hear, considering you’re going to get married,” said Johansson. “That she’s a damn good gal, I mean.”

  “Well,” said Jarnebring evasively. “That’s for sure, but it’s not going to be tomorrow, exactly.”

  “You’re trying to stall for time,” Johansson teased. “Skoal, by the way.”

  “No,” said Jarnebring with a certain emphasis, as soon as he’d set down Aunt Jenny’s glass. “But it’s for sure that there’ll be a certain adjustment.”

  “I thought you said it was like before,” Johansson teased.

  “What is it with you, Lars?” said Jarnebring. “Are you having problems at work or are you holding an interrogation, or what?”

  “I guess I’m just jealous,” said Johansson, sighing. Perhaps you ought to take a swing by that post office, he thought.

  “And here I thought you were jealous,” said Jarnebring, winking and smiling his usual wolfish grin. “Skoal yourself, by the way.”

  . . .

  Then everything had been as usual again. A little too much aquavit, perhaps, for Johansson to feel
good from it—as usual it appeared not to have the least effect on Jarnebring—plus the usual stories in old and new versions about things that had happened since they’d last met.

  “So how’s your new job?” said Jarnebring.

  “You want a truthful answer?” asked Johansson, sighing.

  “Obviously,” said Jarnebring with conviction. “How the hell would it look if people like you and me sat and lied to each other?”

  “It’s probably the dreariest damn job I’ve had in my entire life,” said Johansson, and as he said that he felt it was the truest thing he’d said in a good while.

  “Quit, then,” said Jarnebring. “You’ve got enough to get by. You can start in surveillance. Become one of those old owls.”

  “Yes, in essence I do,” said Johansson, “but that’s not the problem.”

  “What is it, then?” asked Jarnebring. “Do they have to shut down if you step down?”

  “No,” said Johansson. No, he thought. “They could certainly find someone else.”

  “Know what?” said Jarnebring, patting him on the arm. “I’ll give you some good advice.”

  “I’m listening,” said Johansson, nodding. I really am, he thought.

  “Stop whining. It’s only old ladies who whine, and that doesn’t suit you,” said Jarnebring. “Give some real thought to how you want it to be instead, and then it’s just a matter of seeing to it that it turns out that way. Write it down on a piece of paper and clip it securely to your big snout so you don’t forget what you’ve promised yourself.”

  First you decide how you want it to be, and then you see to it that it turns out that way, thought Johansson. Sounds rather obvious, actually.

  “Sounds good,” said Johansson, nodding, because he really thought so. “I’ll think about doing that. Seriously,” he added.

  “That’s not good enough, Lars,” said his best friend, shaking his head. “You already think too much. Just do as I say, then it will work out famously.”

  “I’ll do as you say,” said Johansson, nodding. “Although I’ll lose that bit with the piece of paper.”

  I’ll do it. It’s starting to be high time, he thought.

  A simple weekday dinner with only clear lobster soup, lamb filet, and a mango sorbet; with it a Chablis, which unfortunately was perhaps a bit on the heavy side, an excellent Chambertin, and a good port wine from 1934. Far from the best of the meals they’d enjoyed together, but their conversation had as usual stayed on a very high level.

  “Did you know that Queerlund was a spy for the Russians?” asked the special adviser, sniffing in his glass of red wine. Orange, he thought. Orange, and a scent of perishability.

  “Do the Turks have brown eyes?” Forselius snorted. “I’ve warned them about that damn fairy for forty years now, but do you think there’s anyone who listens?”

  Queerlund was not from Denmark. He was a Swedish diplomat, now retired after a long and extraordinarily successful career. In addition he was homosexual, but in contrast to most others like him he had never made a secret of it. Within the secret police and the military intelligence service it was also an open secret that from the beginning he had sandwiched his diplomatic career with his mission as a spy for the Russians. Obviously his name was not Queerlund, for no Swede was named that. It was his code name among everyone who had tried in vain to put him away, and perhaps not well chosen, because even Queerlund used to find great enjoyment in telling everyone what they called him.

  Queerlund was included in Krassner’s book in the form of a concise, routine declaration of his espionage and sexual orientation and the consequences the latter could have—“a sitting duck for the KGB Call Boys”—but in contrast to everyone else, Krassner also had an explanation for why he’d never been caught. He was the prime minister’s envoy to the Russians, and thereby also protected.

  . . .

  “Wonder why he’s never been caught,” said the special adviser with an innocent expression and his half-closed eyes directed toward a distant crystal chandelier. “If he’s been at it so long, I mean?”

  “Bah,” grunted Forselius. “Hell, people like that are protected.”

  Oh well, observed the special adviser. No bite that time.

  Then they had proceeded to talk about other things, and only when it was time for the port and Forselius was thoroughly soaked with wines from Burgundy that he baited and threw out the hook again.

  “I was thinking about that Pole you told me about,” said the special adviser with the same innocent expression. “The one you killed a few days before I was born.”

  “You can be completely calm, young man,” clucked Forselius. “It had nothing to do with your mother, that I can assure you.”

  Watch yourself, old bastard, thought the special adviser, who didn’t like it when someone spoke about his mother that way.

  “I seem to recall you telling me that he’d dropped out through the window and broken his neck when he tried to flee? May I have the port, by the way?”

  “Yes, what about it?” said Forselius, glaring suspiciously as he set the carafe beyond the reach of his host.

  “I’ve heard that you shot him. May I have a little more port, please?”

  “So that’s what you’ve heard,” said Forselius cunningly as he reluctantly pushed over the carafe.

  “Yes,” nodded the special adviser while he poured more port both for himself and for his tablecloth. “Your old friend Buchanan shot him in the back out on Pontonjärsgatan on Kungsholmen.”

  Forselius slid down a little in his chair, set aside his glass, and clasped his veined old man’s hands over his belly while he inspected his host.

  “Congratulations,” he said, nodding with approval. “How did you get hold of Krassner’s manuscript?”

  “How’d you get hold of it yourself?” countered the special adviser. Forselius slowly shook his head and tapped his broad forehead with his index finger.

  “I haven’t seen a line,” he said. “Who do you take me for? I knew John. I was there, I can count. It’s no more difficult than that.”

  Nice to hear, thought the special adviser. I still don’t need to worry about him.

  “Tell me,” said Forselius with curiosity.

  Then the special adviser told him everything, except how he’d gotten Krassner’s papers and who had given them to him. That was naturally the first thing that Forselius had asked.

  “I understand that you don’t want to say how you got them, and I also understand that it’s not through the usual channels.”

  The special adviser smiled and nodded in agreement. For then you wouldn’t have needed to ask, he thought.

  “Do you believe them?”

  The special adviser had thought a great deal about this but nonetheless took a good while to answer.

  “I have confidence in the supplier,” he said. “I’ve thought a great deal about the delivery. Considering who the supplier is, I’m inclined to buy the delivery as well. Yes and yes.” The special adviser nodded with as much emphasis as someone like him might allow himself.

  “Okay,” said Forselius, and then they moved into the library where the special adviser’s deaf housekeeper had set out coffee and cognac and lit a fire in the fireplace.

  Then they talked business.

  Forselius shared the special adviser’s evaluation. Within the secret police it was probably only the operative himself who knew what Krassner knew. And if he’d understood the contents of the papers he’d taken with him at all—the suicide he’d arranged unfortunately pointed in that direction—at the same time he ought to be the one with the greatest interest in keeping quiet.

  “What do you think?” said the special adviser. “Should I try to find out who he is?”

  Forselius shook his shoulders hesitantly.

  “I think that wouldn’t be very wise,” he said. “Who wants to wake a sleeping bear? And what would we do with him without being dragged along ourselves?”

  So right, so right, the
adviser thought and internally he sighed deeply. For if you really thought about it, it was so bad that it was he and Forselius and a number of retarded secret policemen—one of whom was clearly more actively disturbed—who had ennobled Krassner from one ordinary loony in the pile to a person of great significance for the security of the realm.

  Krassner’s material? Now that they both knew what was there, just how dangerous was it really?

  “At the Ministry of Foreign Affairs they can certainly contain their laughter,” declared Forselius. “They’re no doubt working night and day to prepare the fifty-yard-line negotiations with the Russians.”

  New boundaries were to be drawn in the Baltic. Arriving at the negotiating table with a fresh public questioning of Swedish neutrality policy would hardly contribute to their Russian counterparts’ willingness to compromise.

  “What do you think if we burn the whole thing up ourselves?” asked the special adviser.

  “What do you think your boss would think about that?” clucked Forselius.

  “He would probably not be too happy,” said the special adviser, smiling wryly.

  “And what do you think he would say when he found out about Krassner and his so-called suicide?” asked Forselius with a chuckle.

  “Not happy, sad, and really, really tired,” said the special adviser, laughing till his fat belly jumped.

  On that point they were in complete agreement. By itself they would certainly have been able to deal with Krassner’s material, leaving aside whether a competent editor had put order into the messy manuscript in the meantime and transformed it into a book with hard covers from a reputable publisher. They ought to have been able to manage that too with the usual juggling between denial, silence, and undermining the author, his morals and motives. A few bruises, a few scrapes, perhaps. But that could have worked out.