The idea of a Nordic defense alliance also had to be abandoned early on, and since neither the Norwegians nor the Danes were anything to count on in a pinch, one could live with the fact that it never came to be. In that case the Finns were better, both historically and in other ways, but the Russians had already made sure of them. In such a situation only political double-dealing remained: Wave the placard of “strict Swedish neutrality” amiably toward the Russians-until your arms went numb, if necessary-and at the same time play under the covers with the American military. Take in all the help you can without being discovered. For what choice did you really have?
By and by conditions in Europe had started to normalize. The new borders that had been drawn on the map started to solidify in people’s awareness. The two large power blocs had put themselves in balance. People out in Europe started believing in peace and becoming reconciled to all the new things that were the prerequisites for peace. Both Stalin and Beria were dead, and say what you will about those who replaced them, it no longer seemed completely obvious that the Russian leaders started the day with a breakfast of small children.
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.