He pulled up alongside a low light-coloured fence. Behind it was a little path of paving stones leading up to the steps and the front door. She had bought the place a year before, she explained. That was the first thing she’d decided to do after leaving school: to save up to buy her own home.
She asked if he would like to share a bottle of wine with her. Charles nodded towards the window, and the car that was just visible on the street outside.
‘I’m driving.’
‘Tonight?’
As she smiled, a warmth spread over him.
They sat on the sofa, in front of her television. Eva curled up with her legs tucked under her body, pushed that hair behind her ear again. She had done this many times that day, and Charles wished that he’d counted. It would’ve been a nice thing to remember, a specific number.
‘Have you ever thought about moving away from here?’ he asked.
She had not.
‘I grew up here, I enjoy living here, and I’ve got everything I need here. Well,’ she corrected herself, ‘almost everything.’
Charles drank some wine, red and heavy.
‘Is that normal, for people not to? I mean, do people usually stay here?’
‘I think so. I don’t know. Why shouldn’t they?’
She reached over and stroked his forearm, gently dragging her nails across his skin. Charles saw the hairs on his arm stand up, and she saw that he’d seen.
When he kissed her, she responded hungrily and forcefully. She had been waiting for him.
MARCH 1984
The East German Embassy is located in a district of Stockholm called Lärkstaden, on Bragevägen — in the quiet gap between the busy thoroughfares of Karlavägen and Valhallavägen. It is an embassy that never sleeps, always waiting, always watching. The lights are on throughout the building, shadows lurk behind the curtains, and cars glide down the street at all hours of the day and night.
Alienation. You can’t miss it.
‘This is risky,’ Charles says, and notices how he sinks down into his seat as they drive past the compound.
‘I know. But apparently, he’s done his leg in, so he can’t walk that far.’
The car is a phantom, a cool, quiet Mercedes, with numberplates produced to The Bureau’s specifications. According to the digital clock on the dashboard, there’s exactly two hours left till midnight.
Paul stops the car at the little T-junction where Engelbrekts Kyrkogata meets Östermalmsgatan. He keeps his hand on the key in the ignition, and a close eye on the rear-view mirror. Charles is planning to go with the flow, out of here, and wonders how long the babysitter will put up with Marika this time.
‘Hello?’ says Paul. ‘Have you gone deaf?’
‘I … No. What did you say?’
‘I said that I heard the factory is in danger of going bust.’
‘You mean the glass factory?’
‘Yes. Which could threaten the whole town eventually. They’re struggling with the competition from other factories, apparently. It’s all connected, nowadays. They’re all in different parts of the same big net.’ Then he’s quiet for a moment. ‘When were you last there?’
‘In Bruket? I haven’t been back since we moved.’
‘You might feel better if you did.’
Charles looks out through the window. A lone jogger passes by, turning orange under the sodium street lamps. The slush splashes up as his feet hit the ground.
‘I don’t want to talk about that,’ says Charles.
‘I need to be able to trust you. I need to know that I can count on you.’
‘Have I ever done anything to make you doubt that?’
‘Not yet,’ Paul says. ‘I’ve known you for over three years. This thing has …’
‘Stop.’
‘… torn away at you every day and …’
‘Stop talking about it,’ Charles says, louder.
‘… and it’s getting worse, too.’
He turns to face Paul, strains to relax his jaw but doesn’t succeed.
‘Shut up.’
‘This is precisely what I’m …’
Charles should have taken his belt off — his sudden movement causes the belt to lock as it would in a crash, and his punch changes direction. Suddenly Paul is groaning and coughing.
‘You punched me in the throat, you bastard.’
Charles puts his head against the headrest. His knuckles are pulsating. Paul is massaging his throat. They’re panting, out of sync.
A limping silhouette, propped up by a thin cane, swings out onto Engelbrekts Kyrkogata.
‘Here he comes,’ says Charles.
Paul opens his mouth, has a go at talking.
‘Fuck, that hurt. How do I sound?’
‘Like you’ve got a cold.’
‘That’ll have to do.’
Paul straightens himself and follows the approaching silhouette in the rear-view mirror. When it is a few steps away, Paul turns the key and the engine starts, discreetly and satisfyingly.
The door behind Paul opens, and the interior light comes on. The evening seeps in, damp and cold, along with a man who places his cane onto the seat with care, before easing himself down next to it.
‘Good evening, Mr Kraus,’ Paul says in English.
‘Mr Goffman,’ says the Resident Minister. ‘It’s good to see you again.’
The Residency is a position granted from the other side of the wall in Berlin by HVA, the East German intelligence agency responsible for foreign affairs. The East German Embassy is referred to internally as Residentur 227 and is a sham, nothing more than an intelligence station with some diplomatic capacity — and the person responsible for the operation is the Resident. The ambassador is merely the public face. The Resident, for the past three years, has been Johann Kraus, and during his time in the post this capricious man has become almost as notorious as his boss, Markus ‘Mischa’ Wolf.
The walls of Kraus’ office are adorned with framed photographs: Kraus standing in the background as Sten Wickbom shakes hands with the ambassador, yet, while both men in the foreground are smiling, Kraus’ expression gives nothing away. Another picture: Kraus and Gunnar Fredriksson, politics editor at Aftonbladet, dining together at Operakällaren; Kraus is smiling broadly and holding up a chubby thumb, while Fredriksson looks somewhat nervous, as though the picture was being taken to send to the Kremlin. Next: Kraus sitting next to the managing director of the Royal Dramatic Theatre, in one of the comfortable seats in the largest auditorium. A fourth shows Kraus and the ambassador inside Government House. Kraus has a briefcase in one hand, and a cup of coffee in the other. They are close to Prime Minister Palme’s room. The door is visible in the background, and is slightly ajar.
The photographs are more like trophies than memories.
‘Mr Levin,’ he says. ‘It’s nice to see you, too.’
‘Thank you. Yes.’
‘How is your leg?’ Paul asks, switching to Swedish.
‘Getting better all the time.’ Kraus puts his hand on his cane and looks out of the window. ‘Swedish health care is almost as reassuring as German.’ He furrows his brow just as the interior light turns off again. ‘Your throat is terribly red, Mr Goffman.’
‘It’s eczema.’ Paul pulls out onto Östermalmsgatan. ‘I always get it when it’s cold.’
Smoothly, quietly, with neither a plan nor a destination, the journey continues towards Birger Jarlsgatan.
Facing the street, Kraus looks like a man discovering a new city for the first time. His thick hair is flecked with grey, and — judging by the fringe peeking out from under his black trilby — is neatly combed. He wears thick glasses, framing eyes that are as black as deep wells. He speaks German, Swedish, English, and Russian, but prefers English since it is dispassionate and reserved, the language of capitalism and the bo
urgeoisie: it helps him to keep emotions at bay and his thoughts in order.
He hears everything, sees everything, and is old enough to not let anything surprise him. He’s Stasi through and through, and has been working for them as far back as the intelligence files on him have managed to establish.
‘I had lunch with one of your government ministers today,’ he says. ‘You’ll never guess what we talked about.’
‘Money?’ Paul suggests.
Kraus laughs.
‘So banal. No — morality. I once heard somebody, I can’t remember who, say that morality is reflected in the methods you use, or don’t use, in pursuit of your ends. Would you agree with that?’ Silence. ‘Probably not. Presumably, you would claim, as the minister did, that the morality is the ends, would you not? It’s just rather difficult to know what one’s ends are. Particularly if one is Swedish.’
They pass the area by Roslagstull and Sveaplan, drive up towards Odenplan via the backstreets. This — meeting in person, in a car sweeping through the centre of the city — is not how these exchanges normally take place. Almost without exception, information, money, and goods change hands without those involved ever actually meeting. That is how Charles, Paul, and everyone else in the business keep themselves below the surface and between the lines, but the acute nature of the situation has forced a change in methods.
‘I almost enjoy it,’ says the Resident now, ‘the sheer audacity of our meeting like this.’ He laughs. ‘Two corrupt Swedish security policemen and a simple embassy bureaucrat. A fuck you to Western imperialism and Swedish neutrality.’
‘And no one saw us?’ says Charles.
‘Of course not. I chose the time and location of our meeting with great care.’ Kraus leans forward. ‘Now, to the matter in hand. I understand that there is … a problem with the consignment.’
‘Yes,’ says Paul. ‘But we’ve got it.’
‘You have the consignment?’
‘We know its whereabouts, and it isn’t going anywhere.’
‘And you’re quite sure about that?’
‘You are working with criminals,’ says Charles. ‘You should have told us. It makes our job that bit riskier. That is, unless,’ Charles continues, despite Paul’s stare urging him to stop, ‘you were planning to sort it out yourselves this time.’
‘I’m not sure I understand what you mean,’ Kraus says.
‘I think you do,’ says Charles.
Kraus and his friends plan to get rid of them, and then use other, cheaper middlemen. The likes of Savolainen and Öberg, who cost less because they don’t have as much to lose.
Kraus pushes his glasses up his nose a touch, sighs, selecting his words.
They’re behind, on the other side of the Wall, everyone knows that. There’s even a joke about them: a slice of bread makes a useful compass; simply place it on the Berlin Wall. The side where someone quickly takes a bite is pointing east. Or, how do you know if the Stasi are bugging your home? Easy: suddenly there’s a buzzing cupboard in the hallway and a ten-year-old trailer and a generator outside. In terms of developing technology and electronics, the USA, Sweden, and all the other countries on this side of the Wall are miles ahead. They have lots of money and far greater resources. The Eastern Bloc states do their best to hide the fact, but no one believes them anymore.
‘We do not wish,’ Kraus says, with a subtle but effective emphasis, ‘to jeopardise either our arrangement or the consignment.’
‘Well, then you will understand the necessity of renegotiation,’ Charles says as Paul pulls up at a red light close to Odenplan.
The church tower, rising sharp and cold towards the heavens, looks more like a spear than anything else.
‘That is what I was afraid of,’ says Kraus.
‘Thirty per cent instead of fifteen.’
‘Not a chance. Twenty.’
‘Twenty-five,’ says Charles.
A Saab stops in the lane alongside them. In a child seat in the back, there’s a child with soft cheeks and a round face, wearing a brown or dark-red woolly hat. The child smiles at Kraus, who raises a hand, waves, and smiles back.
‘Okay,’ he says. ‘Twenty-five.’
Twenty-five per cent. Two million crowns — one each. The lights change. The Saab sweeps off towards Sveavägen, and the Mercedes glides smoothly and quietly out onto Odengatan.
‘You will have to give me time though,’ Kraus continues. ‘I need to clear it with Berlin. A month, at least,’ he continues, pre-empting Paul’s question. ‘Maybe more.’
‘And,’ says Charles, ‘with everything that we need to take into account here, we won’t be done before the summer, perhaps not until early in the autumn.’
Saying it out loud, how drawn-out this is all getting, fills him with a sense of hopelessness. A never-ending story.
‘That sounds reasonable,’ says Kraus. ‘And?’
‘The only way to make them disappear is to keep moving them, at irregular intervals, between three or four sites, and then they happen to go up in smoke somewhere along the line.’
‘And how could you avoid such a disappearance coming to the attention of your Director?’
‘Well, we can’t,’ says Paul. ‘We’ll have to lie.’
‘And given his current condition, if I am correctly informed,’ Kraus says, ‘that may be reasonably straightforward. Is it correct that he is now chain-smoking?’
‘Yes,’ says Charles.
‘Chesterfield?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Chesterfield may be the only tasteful thing ever to have come out of America,’ Kraus says. ‘With the exception of the atom bomb.’
When they arrive back in Lärkstaden, there’s an hour to go until midnight. Charles wants to get home, worried that the babysitter might have fallen asleep or simply given up and left, leaving Marika alone in her bed, alone if she wakes up from a nightmare.
‘Our man in Stockholm will contact you in due course,’ Kraus says, with his hand ready on the car door handle. ‘It may be a while, but when he does, I suggest you show him rather more hospitality than you have shown me tonight.’
‘We will,’ Paul says. ‘I do apologise.’
‘Excuse me,’ says Charles, ‘but was that a threat?’
Kraus smiles and opens the door.
‘We are socialists, not bandits.’ He puts the tip of his cane on the tarmac. ‘Good evening, gentlemen.’
He really ought to get rid of the babysitter. Every time she looks at him, it’s with a look that says he should be spending more time with his daughter. He suspects it might have got her sacked before. Her name is Pauline, she’s nineteen years old, and each time she comes she brings a new, thick book, which she reads whenever Marika is busy with something.
She is sitting on a chair in the hall, boots on and coat in hand, when Charles enters.
‘Is she asleep?’
‘Yes.’ She stands up. ‘I couldn’t be bothered with the washing up.’
‘Don’t worry.’
There it is — that look. Charles gets his wallet out and starts counting notes to avoid seeing it.
‘Was everything okay today?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘What, did something happen?’
Pauline puts her coat on, one arm first, then the other, slowly, deliberately drawing it out, as a punishment. He has the urge to slam her against the wall.
‘She was violent towards a kid in her class.’
‘Why?’
‘What do you mean why?’
‘Marika isn’t wicked. If she was violent towards someone, they must have done something to her.’
Pauline sighs.
‘Right. This time at least, according to the teacher, it was unprovoked.’
‘Who was this kid?’
‘Patrik.’
<
br /> Charles tries to recall the name.
‘Is he …’ he says with the notes in his fist, ‘a bit of a handful?’
‘No.’ Pauline takes the money. ‘No, he isn’t.’ She looks in the mirror, straightens her hair. ‘There’s a note on the kitchen table.’
‘What kind of note?’
‘From the school. She threatened him with a knife.’
Then she leaves.
A twelve-year-old girl shouldn’t need a babysitter, but he isn’t at home enough, and when she’s on her own she doesn’t eat, doesn’t wash, doesn’t clean. Marika doesn’t follow any instructions unless she knows you’re watching. It’s always been like that. The mother passes her dark side to the daughter.
Charles gently pushes the door to her room open. She’s lying flat on her back, exhausted, and is sleeping with her mouth half open.
Out in the kitchen, the ceiling lamp casts a warm light over the kitchen table and the two dirty plates left on it. Sausages. Again. Is that all Pauline can cook? Charles really should get rid of her.
At first, he had suspected that she was a spy, despite the detailed background checks he had carried out before employing her. He’s not really worried about that anymore. She’s not clever enough, and what she lacks in intelligence she makes up for with ethics and integrity, two characteristics that are positively unhelpful for an intelligence operative.
Between the plates is a note, from Marika’s school, on which someone has, for some reason, written the heading INCIDENT REPORT 01-03-1984. It is from head teacher Roland Rasmussen, and the contents inform Charles that at lunchtime Marika Levin first threatened, and then attempted to injure, one of her classmates with a knife. It happened in the dinner queue, and didn’t last long. Patrik managed to parry the knife and Marika quickly calmed down.
INCIDENT REPORT. Like they were police or something.
Charles folds the paper twice, and leaves the washing up. The great thing about Pauline is that she’ll always do what needs to be done, no matter how much she wants, out of principle or malice, to leave it undone. If it’s too messy, she’ll clean. If there are no clean plates or cutlery, she’ll wash up. She’ll take the bin out if it stinks too much.
Master, Liar, Traitor, Friend: a Leo Junker case Page 10
