The piles before him had thinned out and most of it he’d been able to sort out. Of the documentation only a letter with its envelope and a condolence card with a black frame and a three-line poem remained. But these were original documents, not copies, they were handwritten, and according to Krassner it was the prime minister, Pilgrim, who had written them, after he’d become prime minister, and according to Krassner he had written them in May 1974. They were postmarked Stockholm and sent by express mail to Buchanan’s post office box at home in Albany.
Almost twenty years after he’d written his farewell letter, thought Johansson. An entire lifetime, considering all that had happened and all that he’d experienced. Peculiar, very peculiar, thought Johansson.
We ought to be able to check on these, he thought from force of habit while by turns he held the letter, the condolence card, and the envelope between the nails of his thumb and index finger, twisting and turning them. Perhaps there are prints too, he thought. American technicians had succeeded in securing fingerprints that were decades old-he’d read that in the FBI’s monthly journal-and it was almost always a matter of prints left on paper. Where would I get his fingerprints from? thought Johansson with a wry smile.
…
The letter first: It was short, written by hand with Pilgrim’s characteristic, expressively forward-leaning penmanship-like a cavalry charge on paper, thought Johansson, smiling again. The stationery was thick and certainly expensive. When he held it up against the light he saw the Lessebo watermark.
Fionn,
Heard about Raven’s tragic death yesterday. I truly hope that you put away the bastards who did it. Because I’m guessing that you intend to go to his funeral, I would be grateful if you could deliver the enclosed final greeting from me. Don’t ask me why, but Raven was a true lover of Icelandic sagas. Take care!
Pilgrim
Then the condolence card, which he had sent in the same envelope.
If this is Snorre then I’m Japanese, thought Johansson while he read the three lines on the card, written in Swedish:
Death is black like a raven’s wing,
Sorrow is cold like a midwinter night
Just as long and no way out
Must be something that Pilgrim wrote himself, thought Johansson. Perhaps something that only he and Raven understood the meaning of and which now served as a final greeting. What was it she’d said, that extraordinarily talented woman he’d met a month before? A man with a poetic disposition, or rather a poetic ambition?
Johansson leaned back in the desk chair while he stretched his back with his fingers laced together behind his neck in order to think better. But this time it didn’t help. Instead he took Krassner’s manuscript and continued to read. Now only a third of it remained, a thin bundle that already felt limp in his hand and whose written contents seemed to promise little more. According to Krassner, during his active period Buchanan recruited almost a hundred agents in the struggle for Europe’s young, developing elite. He’d had two favorites, and according to his nephew they were the only ones who really meant anything to him. One was Pilgrim and the other was Raven. The first had betrayed him; the other had been faithful to him unto death.
Raven was Salomon “Sal” Tannenbaum, same age as Pilgrim. Born and raised in New York in a prosperous intellectual Jewish family, and according to the “Irishman” Krassner, that was just about the best background you could have in the international intelligence world, regardless of whether you “opened your brown eyes” in Moscow, Warsaw, London, or New York.
Must be your German father, thought Johansson grimly while he hurried through the sparse text.
He’d gotten his agent name, Raven, from Buchanan, an obvious and simple choice, as he looked like a raven and was as wise as two. After studying law at Harvard and an early involvement in the American student movement, he’d met Buchanan, been recruited as an agent for the CIA, and gone over to Europe in order to make a few introductory brushes with the communist student organizations.
In Frankfurt, in November 1948, Raven met Pilgrim. Not unexpectedly, they took a liking to each other.
Raven’s contribution on the European front, however, had not lasted long. Instead he’d returned to the United States and started working as an attorney for just about every worthy, politically correct purpose whatsoever that could be found in the great land to the west. Sal Tannenbaum had represented the civil-rights movement, the Black Panthers, Mexican farmworkers, Native Americans, and even Eskimos. He had “stood up” for racial integration, union rights, peace in Vietnam, and of course for world peace. He had thundered against organized crime and capitalist exploitation of the black underclass. He had almost always done it pro bono-and according to Krassner he’d been one of the CIA’s most effective infiltrators of the “radical, socialist, and communist movements” on the American home front for more than twenty years.
Sweet Jesus, sighed Johansson. If this is true he can’t have had it too easy.
In May of 1974 a man, probably in early middle age, probably white, probably dressed in a suit, with an everyday appearance, had come into Tannenbaum’s office. Calm, quiet, and unobserved he walked past the receptionist, who was on the phone as usual, opened the door to Tannenbaum’s office, and shot a bullet right through his head. Then he’d left the place, and considering who the victim was and how little the witnesses had seen, the whole thing was a police nightmare.
Must have been crawling with motives and possible perpetrators, thought Johansson. And if it really was as Krassner alleged, and someone else must have come to the same conclusion, you probably have to multiply them by two, he thought.
According to Krassner it was much simpler than that. The murder of Raven was a contract killing. The person who had ordered it was Pilgrim, and those who’d helped him with the practical aspects were the new masters he was serving, the Soviet Union and its military intelligence services. (Hence the title of Krassner’s book, “The Spy Who Went East.”) Krassner’s explanation was long, complicated, and thin. Firm evidence was completely lacking and instead Krassnerian logic held unrestricted sway. During his twenty years with the police, Johansson had heard a number of Swedish variations on the same theme discussed ad nauseam in police break rooms and among friends, although he’d never heard anything even remotely similar to this.
Fair is fair, thought Johansson while reviewing in his mind’s eye several of the most rabid characters among the colleagues he’d had, all of whom had in common that they never ought to have been allowed to become policemen. Russian spy? Yes, because “everyone knew” that. Murderer? No, and there wasn’t anyone who suggested that, either. And personally he’d always thought-regardless of how he’d voted, for that of course had varied over the years-that the whole thing was pure nonsense. That the prime minister would spy for the Soviet Union was just as improbable as he now found it probable that for several years in his youth he’d been an agent for the CIA. I’ll buy that from you, thought Johansson, and the “you” he was thinking of was that wretched Krassner and his thirsty uncle. But the rest you can just forget.
Having come that far in his musings, he was interrupted by the phone ringing, even though it was only eight o’clock on a Sunday morning. It was Wiklander, and as a real policeman should he’d found something out. Namely that the mysterious Professor Forselius not only knew highly placed persons in the secret police but also was a close friend of the prime minister’s special adviser, the same man responsible for security issues that affected the prime minister and the government.