“At two-eighteen hours the surveillance object came out onto the balcony of his bedroom on the upper floor of the villa. Thereafter with a certain difficulty he came to so-called attention and raised a glass of champagne with his right hand, after which he proposed four cheers to His Majesty the King. He was at the time in question dressed in blue briefs with yellow stripes, an army uniform jacket with lieutenant general’s rank markings, ditto cap with peak. The object had thereafter begun singing the first lines of the King’s song, whereupon the door to the balcony was opened from inside the villa and a naked female person came out onto the balcony and led the object through the balcony door into the villa. The female in question is according to our evaluation identical with the object’s wife, who at the moment described made an extremely exhilarated impression. Certain activity appears thereafter to have occurred in the bedroom. Because the curtains had been drawn and the door to the balcony closed, however, the more precise nature of this activity could not be ascertained. At five-thirty hours the light in the bedroom was turned off.”
How could they know that it was champagne? thought Berg as he fed the surveillance memorandum into his paper shredder.
Before he and Waltin parted company they agreed to tone down the military aspect of their survey of antidemocratic elements. The minister could hardly be counted on, and two against one was one too many.
“I think it’s best that we lie low until we see how this develops,” said Berg.
“Yes, that’s probably the safest until we know if he’s fish or fowl,” agreed Waltin. How can a person who is so talented be a social democrat? he thought.
Things had gone well and things had gone badly, but Berg had stayed in his position. Things had gone well and things had gone badly, but regardless of which, day had followed day and turned into months and by and by into years, and Berg was still sitting where he was. At the same time it was in some way as though his surroundings-his mission and the people who made that same mission tangible and concrete-were in the process of closing around him. But not to take him in their embrace, which would have been difficult enough, as he preferred a firm handshake at a respectful distance, but rather as preparation for something quite different. Berg had spent a day at the secure location to analyze his situation seriously and in depth, with himself as his only interlocutor.
Police Superintendent Waltin was Berg’s closest man. He was ten years younger than Berg, and when Berg thought about who would become his successor, thoughts that he didn’t relish, it was Waltin he envisioned. They had a history in common, they had secrets in common, on a few occasions they had even exchanged personal confidences, and in addition he was Waltin’s mentor. Considering their common mission it was also Waltin to whom he had given the task of holding his protective hand around its innermost core, the most sensitive, the most secret of all things secret, that which could not be jeopardized at any price and which must never be revealed: the external operation.
Nor was there anything that indicated he couldn’t trust Waltin. All the checks he had carried out on him had been completely without result, not the least hint of anything that didn’t add up, if you disregarded that silly story about his secret key to the one-armed bandit and other such childishness. Still, something was wrong. He sensed that it was there and he couldn’t even put his finger on it.
Berg’s officers were all ambitious, meticulous, and hardworking. Those who weren’t he got rid of or placed in positions in his organization where their deficiencies could be of use for his overarching purposes, but still, sometimes it went wrong.
At his last meeting with his superiors, most of the time had been devoted to discussing the disturbing reports collected by his group for the surveillance of the Kurds. This minister of justice was the latest in a line of ministers of justice, and was like his predecessors to the point of interchangeability in muddling their considerations.
“This Kudo,” asked the minister of justice. “What kind of fellow is he? Kudo? It sounds foreign, almost African. Is the fellow African?”
Then he would hardly have a first name like Werner, thought Berg, but he didn’t say so. Instead he shook his head politely.
“Inspector Kudo is the head of the Kurdish group’s surveillance unit,” said Berg. “He’s the one who has compiled and written the report in question,” he explained.
“Oh, I understand,” said the special adviser, raising his eyelids a millimeter. “That’s why he signed his name to it.”
“I mean the name,” said the minister of justice, who didn’t give up so easily. “Kudo? Isn’t that African?”
“I seem to recall that his father came here as a refugee from Estonia after the war,” said Berg. “Kudo. I think the name is actually Estonian.”
“Personally I would say it’s an assumed name,” said the special adviser, his eyelids lowered and wearing his usual irritating smile. “Let us assume, purely hypothetically, that is,” he said and for some reason nodded at Berg, “that his father’s name was Kurt and his mother’s was Doris. So it became KuDo instead of Andersson. One ought to be grateful that he doesn’t spell it with a capital ‘D.’ Ku-Do,” said the special adviser with emphasis on both syllables, while for some reason he looked at the minister.
“Exactly,” said the minister of justice and giggled. “For then I might well have thought he was Japanese. As in ‘judo,’ I mean,” he clarified, nudging the chief legal officer, who smiled politely without saying anything.
“If this is important to you gentlemen I can of course check this out,” said Berg politely. One complete fool, one who never says anything, and one who isn’t in his right mind, thought Berg.
“It would be just splendid if you could do that,” said the special adviser with exaggerated warmth in his voice. “I guess if necessary I can put up with the fact that the fellow can neither think nor write-what do we really have to choose from?-but I’m suspicious of types who change their names.”
What is it you really want to say? thought Berg.
A hidden message, thought Berg a few hours later. He was sitting behind his desk and had just finished reading Werner Kudo’s personal file. Born Werner Andersson, son of Kurt Andersson and his wife, Doris, née Svensson.
Careless of me, thought Berg.
It had been a very delicate task to recruit people to the Kurdish group. Finding people who were ambitious, meticulous, and hardworking and who at the same time could accept the ever more fantastic stories that their hard-pressed informants were delivering. Werner Kudo had fit like a hand in a glove since the day in the break room when, in utmost confidence, he had revealed to one of Berg’s secret informants within the operation that there were gnomes on the farm in Småland where he had grown up. Little homespun-clad fellows who kept a watchful eye on people, livestock, and buildings at his parental home, he explained while his colleague in the break room nodded encouragingly, listened eagerly, and made a mental note of every word.
Also, it was Berg who had found the perfect partner for Kudo. His name was Christer Bülling-that name was also assumed, but because his birth name was Sprain the reason was self-explanatory. He had worked at the Solna police department’s planning group before Berg sank his claws into him. It was the Stockholm chief constable who had tipped him off. During a dinner he had talked about a younger colleague from Solna whom he had met during a meeting and who had made an indelible impression on him.
“The most intelligent young man I’ve ever met; the others call him the Professor,” the chief constable had said by way of summary. This had immediately aroused Berg’s curiosity.