“That was quick,” said Johansson.
“So-so,” said Wiklander modestly. “It’s her number and it goes with the address.”
“Tell me,” said Johansson with curiosity. “How’d you go about it?” He held up his watch with an inquiring smile.
“I forget,” said Wiklander. “Don’t really know what you’re talking about.”
It would be simplest to call her. Johansson was staring gloomily at his slip of paper. What time is it there now? he thought. He checked his watch. Almost twelve here makes almost six there. That wouldn’t come off too well, maybe, he thought. And tomorrow he was going to the United States.
The world is really full of strange coincidences, thought Johansson, with a heavy sigh.
Johansson hadn’t called her. On the other hand, Jarnebring had called him at home that evening.
He sounded in high spirits and wondered how the investigations had gone.
“How many do you want us to arrest and do we need to request assistance from the riot squad?” he asked, chuckling into the receiver.
“No need,” said Johansson. “I went by and talked with Vindel but that led nowhere.”
“What do you know,” said Jarnebring, faking astonishment. “That led nowhere?”
“It occurred to me that perhaps he’d run into him. That Vindel had seen Krassner before because they both moved around in the same area. Just a wild chance,” said Johansson, sighing.
“You didn’t find out a thing, in other words.”
“Not a thing,” lied Johansson.
“No need to be so hangdog,” said Jarnebring. “There don’t seem to be very many people who knew our man Krassner.”
“No?” said Johansson. “What do you mean?”
“I spoke with the embassy this afternoon, well, with Hultman, that is, and Krassner doesn’t seem to have any relatives.”
“Aha,” said Johansson. What do you mean? he thought.
“Yes, Hultman was a little worried because they must have someone to send his things to.”
Not my problem, thought Johansson.
“And the only person the folks there could get hold of was evidently some old girlfriend. But according to her it had been ten years since the breakup between her and Krassner. According to Hultman.”
Old girlfriend, thought Johansson; at the same time the well-known alarm bells started to sound inside him.
“I don’t understand,” said Johansson. “Has Hultman talked with Krassner’s old girlfriend?”
“Are you drunk, Johansson?” asked Jarnebring politely.
“Stone sober,” said Johansson. “A little tired, perhaps.”
“I understand,” said Jarnebring pedagogically. “Our American colleagues who tried to find out who Krassner was have spoken with an old girlfriend of his. By the way, I’ve received a copy of their interview with her. First she says that it was about ten years ago or so that she broke up with him-”
“Yes,” said Johansson. “I’m listening.”
“Stop interrupting, then,” said Jarnebring. “Where was I?”
“Old girlfriend who broke up ten years ago.”
“Exactly,” said Jarnebring with the emphasis of someone who has just found a lost thread. “And second, she doesn’t appear to have been one of his most ardent admirers.”
“Maybe that’s why she broke up with him,” said Johansson.
“For sure,” said Jarnebring, “but Krassner seems to have missed that, for he’s listed her as his nearest relation, and in addition a will has been found where he leaves everything to her. I reserve judgment on what that may be, but I bet my old police helmet that we’re hardly talking in the billions.”
“Does she have a name?” asked Johansson innocently.
“Sarah something. I have it at work.”
Sarah J. Weissman, thought Johansson but kept his mouth shut.
“I see,” said Johansson. “Yes, frankly speaking I’m damn tired of this story.”
“Nice to hear,” said Jarnebring. “And you…
“Yes,” said Johansson.
“Have a nice trip and take care of yourself over there. That’s why I called, actually.”
“Thanks,” said Johansson. “Take care of yourself too.”
This gets stranger and stranger, he thought as he put down the receiver.
[SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 30]
On Saturday the thirtieth of November Lars Martin Johansson took an early morning plane to New York. As travel companions he had two chief inspectors from the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation. Exceptional police officers and nice fellows.
Fuck you, Krassner, and fuck you, Weissman, thought Johansson. Because now I’m going to have a good time and maybe even learn something new that might prove useful.
“I’m thinking of having a shot with lunch,” said Johansson, smiling wryly.
His colleague from the bureau’s narcotics squad nodded thoughtfully.
“The same thought actually occurred to me too.”
Their colleague from the Interpol section nodded as well.
“Remarkable,” he said. “I was just thinking the exact same thing. Life can be really strange sometimes.”
CHAPTER II
Free falling, as in a dream
Stockholm in the 1970s and 1980s
In the fall of 1976 the secret police set up an external group to increase its organizational security. Given the working name Group for Internal Security and Protection Against Leakage, it constituted the most secret part of covert police operations. As protection against discovery, a number of measures had been taken. A private-sector management consulting firm was created as a front for its operation; its office was in the city, and no one who worked there could be traced back to the secret police’s already secret lists and payrolls.
Contacts with the parent organization that the group was created to watch over and defend were, naturally, surrounded with every conceivable secrecy. To start with, the group was run solely by the head of the operations bureau, who in reality was head of the entire secret police. Because of the character of the group’s mission this solution had proven to be far from ideal, primarily because it limited the opportunities for systematic insight into the various branches of the operation.
For that reason, changes were made the following year. Another special group was created within the larger organization-the Group for Organizational Protection-and on the basis of that, a network of informants had been built up in all branches of the operation. At the same time, the majority of them were-hopefully-unaware of the fact that they now had a dual function in which they not only did their work but also reported what they and their colleagues were doing via daily hour-by-hour reports and continuously updated logs of data access as well as internal and external contacts. The union had objections, of course, but because SePo’s union was only a pale shadow of the uniformed police officers’ professional organization-and as usual had no idea what the whole thing was really about-the new system still turned out as planned.
The external group had been retained, of course, and essentially in the same form as before. The influx of information had also increased markedly, but the price to be paid was that more people within the parent organization were now aware of the external group’s existence. The entire process was a good illustration of the classic dilemma of all secret police work. Ultimately it was about putting together a puzzle, and it went without saying that the task was considerably easier if the ones doing the solving had access to all the pieces. As a method the process was a complete disaster, of course, if the intention was to simultaneously keep both the puzzle-solving and the finished puzzle secret from as many people as possible, regardless of which side they belonged to.
Among the initiated few who were aware of the external operation, it was also known that the entire construction was the idea of the bureau director, Berg. Berg was the head of the operations bureau but had never breathed a word of his role as its originator, which among his superiors was interpreted as a good sign of both discretion and personal modesty. Berg himself knew better, for he had gotten the whole concept from the German security service, from its major and minor aspects all the way down to pure details; they had a long tradition of just this aspect of secret police work.